The Hunted
by Aurrin
Summary: Also: Horror, Romance. When a series of strange events in the former USSR turn sour, Sly Cooper finds himself running not just for his freedom or life, but for all he holds dear. Rated T for possible moderate language and graphic descriptions.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer:  
This story is a work of fiction based on the story of "Sly Cooper" as seen in the game "Sly Cooper and the Theivius Racoonus" and subsequent video games. All copyrightable/trademark elements of the game have full rights reserved by Sucker Punch Productions. All other elements of this story are copyright 2005 to Aurrin Lightpaw.

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**The Hunted  
** **  
**

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_Chapter 1_

Ghazi Khalid strode down the hall, personal affects in his arms, with all the cautious confidence one would expect on the first day of a job. It'd taken years of hard training, but he'd finally passed the police academy with honors, in spite of the flack he'd caught from his instructors. In the political climate of today, people of middle-eastern descent did not find warm welcome in the western world. Not that he could especially blame them. It was a truly frightening thought that the enemy could be literally anyone, anytime. _And that's precisely the way they want it._ he thought, not for the first time, with a mental sigh. But he'd presevered, toughing out the hardest classes with a determination that was nothing short of hurculean.

Now, the jackal found his office, right where the Chief had said it would be moments earlier. He laughed quietly to himself about how tense he must be to even note that a room hadn't moved of it's own volition. The plaque outside the door was a standard paper-slip holder type. To his lack of surprise, it still contained the name of the former occupant, a one "Bruce Mikhail". Ghazi pulled the strip out without a second thought and carried it inside with him, looking for a trash can.

The office was about what he'd expected, though far better than he'd feared. It wasn't spacious, but one couldn't expect that for someone just starting out. Getting his own office at all was, in fact, an unexpected development at first. Usually, new employees find themselves in a cubical, even in Interpol. He chalked it up to the age of the building, which was built long before someone ever had the wretched idea to use cardboard spacers to cram more people into an office...

The desk was clean, with an obvious 'just dusted' look that suggested the maid had had to remove the mothballs to make the room ready. As he set down the box with a few of his belongings, he noticed a faint whiff of a chemical smell in the air, and he realized that mothballs might have been the literal truth. The plaster was cracked on one wall, but not exceedingly so. There was a file cabinet in one corner with a disgusting green paint job that could only have come from the 1970's. He was grateful at every reminder that he hadn't had to live through those years. The cabinet was rather beat up, and upon inspection, completely empty except for a few general office supplies in the bottom drawer. Those, too, looked to be from the '70s. He put them back, and made a mental note to sort through them later.

He started to pull things out of the box. A few pictures to place on his desk, a few momentos from the academy, a picture of a girl he'd known in school... all of them he carefully found a place for. He didn't place them obtrusively, but arranged it so that they highlighted the office from the sidelines. It gave it a less sterile appearance. Then he put a small lamp on the filing cabinet and pointed at the desk. It made the room, which had no window, a little lighter.

He sat down in his chair and set a pad of paper on the desk along with the case file he'd been given. Opening the manilla folder, he began to scan through the contents, preparing for tomorrow's meeting with the Chief.

* * *

Vllad Iklo never knew what hit him. A knife plunged through the Ocelot's heart so quickly there was no time to scream -- exactly as the killer had planned. It had taken months of practice to perfect that, but the time had been well spent, as this mission was proving. The operator's body slid to the floor, leaving a streak of blood on the wall, while the figure wearing baggy camoflauge pants and a black face-mask jerked the knife out and sheathed it. Checking his watch, he noted the time. The situation was too tense for a smile, but he did note satisfaction at being fifteen seconds ahead of schedule. It wasn't much, but it was more than he'd expected.

Quickly, he dashed the door at the other side of the room, to the door with the keypad next to it. He punched in the numbers he'd memorized and was rewarded with a metallic snick in the locking mechanism as the bolt slid back. In one fluid motion, he drew his silenced pistol and opened the door. A bullet landed between the eyes of the ferret in a white uniform even as he turned to see who had entered. Crimson sprayed the status display behind him, but it wasn't the display that the intruder wanted, so it was of little consequence.

Quickly, the burly panther leapt to the console, which was precisely where the layout he'd commited to memory told him it would be. He'd never seen the actual panel, but he knew exactly how it looked and exactly what to do. He reached over and began pushing the sliders, numbered in Russian from one to four. The first one he pulled all the way down. The rest he slid in one push all the way up. Without even checking to see if it was working, he turned on a heel and ran.

He jerked the hand-held radio from his belt and barked the harsh syllables of his native tounge into it. There was a relpy on the other end, and he uttered a sound that couldn't be mistaken as anything but a string of curses. There was no time for errors in this job. It was down to plus or minus ten seconds of pulling it off entirely, with no room for undertrained buffoons. Up ahead, the hall forked, with one side branching off toward the cores. He stopped for two seconds and wondered about whether to finish their portion of the job for him. He knew the layout of the power plant better than probably anyone else on the mission. If it could be done...

A deafening alarm began blaring from a siren overhead, beneath a yellow and magenta three-armed symbol. He made his decision and turned the other way, headed for the number one reactor. A job was a job, and if they couldn't get out, then so be it. The goal was more important than any one person or persons. Even he was expendible, and he knew it. Quickly, he darted into the room and dashed the console. His fingers, nimble even within their leather gloves, tapped out a sequence on the keypad. The machinery in front of him began to rumble in compliance, even as it's sisters down the open bay began to rumble much more ominously. He heard a couple of shouts from his team members, but ignored them.

A few seconds later, he beheld the prize. The giant concrete construction, painted a dirty white perfectly in keeping with the former Soviet Union, reluctantly yielded it's innermost secret. He grabbed the case that had been planted their by operatives earlier from the corner, and quickly scooped the silvery-purple metal bars into it, sealing it shut. He checked his watch, making sure he'd been quick enough. It was close, but he should be able to survive the dosage. Even if he didn't... he knew he wasn't really expected to survive anyway.

He grabbed the case and backtracked to his point of entry like a juggernaut, each step pounding the cracked tile floors like it was on borrowed time. He ran out the door and to the chain-link fence, ducking through the hole that had been cut. A brilliant explosion lit up the night sky as Cheyrnobl once again blew itself to hell. _Damn! It's twenty seconds early!_ the fleeing figure thought in a flash as he ran toward the woods. Even as he pulled out his make-shift dosimeter, he knew it was too late. The tell-tale black only served to confirm it.

_No matter what... I must complete the mission..._ he repeated like a mantra, steeling himself. He now had only a matter of minutes, maybe an hour at the outside, to reach the drop-off point...

* * *

Author's Notes: 

No, the connection with Sly Cooper isn't blatantly obvious yet. It will be, have patience.

Have I intrigued you, dear reader? Then by all means, do read on...

Please be patient with me as I figure out how to work the story system. It's quite exhasperating.

Comment and Critique welcome, flames will be outright ignored.

(Thanks to Yuoofox for getting me interested in this game to start with.)


	2. Chapter 2

Author's notes, Chapter 2: 

Heiduska - Thank you for the review. :) I recommend novelistic roleplay for expanding writing capabilities, and also reading lots of books that have the style you want to use. It will help you immensely.

Yuoofox - Good to see you read it. Thank you very very much. Please, people, don't be afraid to review.

(note: Unless someone tells me I have to, I'm not going to include a disclaimer with every chapter. There's no point, really. If you're not convinced that I'm not attempting to commit IP theft with the first one, subsequent ones won't change your mind. ;) If it is a rule, let me know and I'll fix it.)

* * *

_Chapter 2_

**CNN - Live Coverage of the second Chernobyl Disaster**

The words scrolled across the ticker-tape news header while the reporter's voice droned with the typical media less-than-heartfelt sympathy. Sly had sprawled on the couch, watching the glowing screen, dumbfounded. The television screen cast a somber, flickering light over the room that seemed to make everything silhouette.

"You mean they still RAN that thing!" he exclaimed incredulously, surprised that a nuclear plant which had already melted down once was allowed to even operate.

"All of the former USSR has been in very bad financial straits, Sly." Bentley spoke up from behind his computer. "Bad as it was, they couldn't really afford not to continue running it. Entire cities were depending on the power it generated."

Sly seemed to chew on the idea a moment, though his look of disbelief made it clear he could not accept it so readily. "Yeah, but could it really be worth all the risk?" he asked, gesturing to the screen.

Bentley tapped a few more keys, bringing up more live newsfeeds onto his monitor. The screen reflected off of his glasses, flickering just at the edge of perceptible vision. He pushed the lenses further up on his bulbous nose and looked at Sly with an expression full of regret.

"It's easy to judge such things in hindsight, Sly. It's much harder to assess that beforehand with any certainty. Besides, I'm picking up hints that there are suspicions that this was no accident."

Sly's ears perked up. "You really think?"

"Oh, they aren't saying it in so many words, to be sure, but the subtle signs are there. The careful phrasing, the politically neutral statements... they're being so overly cautious not to name any suspects that it's virtually implied that suspects do, in fact, exist."

Sly fixed him with another disbelieving stare. "But who would be stupid enough to blow up a nuclear power plant?"

"Depends on what their purpose was. Maybe they were trying to work on throwing Ukraine into disarray." He grew quiet and they both watched the TV for a long moment. "If that's the case, they certainly seem to have succeeded..." he added softly.

"What's shaking, guys?" Murray said by way of greeting as he waddled into what passed for the living room, making a beeline for the couch. Sly knew better than to stay in the way of the irrepressible hippo, and moved over to make room on the threadbare, patched cushions. Bentley was sympathetic, Sly could hardly believe the situation, but Murray was totally oblivious to the implications. As if to accentuate the point, he sat a big bowl of popcorn down on the metal TV-tray that served as an end-table and reached across Sly for the remote.

"Wrestle-mania is on!" he said by way of explanation as Sly struggled to stay out of his way. The hippo flicked the channel to 12, earning glacial stares from both the raccoon and the turtle. He immediately broke into an exasperated groan. Yet another anchorman stood in front of a green-screen with a map of the Ukraine in political colors. Superimposed on the map was an area of pulsing, unhealthy green, with a red 'X' in the center.

"Officials say that the affected rate could reach into the hundreds of thousands of square miles by the end of the day. Cities as far away as Khariv and Minsk are preparing for evacuation, and all countries bordering the Ukraine are on highest alert. Ukraine itself is, at this time, in a state of total chaos. No one has accurately measured the spread of radioactivity, but satellite mapping suggests they may have entered the jet stream, with the potential to spread them for hundreds of miles. This could be one of the worst catastrophes in the history of the USSR. Most remember the horror of the original Chernobyl disaster, and the fear clearly runs very deeply in this region."

Murray stared in shock. Though the incident had happened some hours earlier, in the late afternoon in Paris, evening in Ukraine, it was just now sinking in on the gentle giant the sheer enormity of what was happening. If the figures alone hadn't been enough to convince, the footage from the media crews on relief choppers was. Hundreds of square miles of forest were charred. The radiation had burned them as if physically, and it gave the appearance of a firestorm having swept through, even though the actual blast had barely left the grounds of the nuclear facility. The desolation was worthy of T.S. Elliot, the somber, morbid feelings accompanying it, the province of Dickens. It weighed on the heart, such a viscerally unnatural scene, and Bentley silently swore at the double-edged sword of technology that now fed such sights in real-time HD quality across the globe for the horrified consumption of viewers everywhere.

But it sank on the hippo like a sack of bricks, all at once. The horror, the shock, the black plastic body bags being carried out of towns to hospitals, the white contamination suits... tears began to slide down his cheeks. Without a sound, an impressive feat for one of his stature, he stood and walked to the staircase.

Sly started after him, but Bentley stopped the raccoon with a gentle hand.

"Just let him go, Sly. Murray needs a little time alone."

"But, Bentley, he really needs a friend right now."

Bentley looked at him, an old hurt showing through his concern. "You don't know everything Murray's been through. I knew him before you met us, I've seen him like this before. Just... stand back and give him some room. He'll be back soon enough."

Sly returned to the couch with a haunted look, unable to tear himself away from the television in spite of himself...

* * *

Carmelita, for her part, knew little of the actual event itself. But to say she was unaware would slight her, for she did in fact know very much of the _repercussions_ of the event. The first inkling she'd had that something was awry was as she'd stepped in the door to her home at five-twenty-six. The phone was ringing, clamoring for her attention in a harsh tone that was impossible to ignore. Carmelita liked it that way; it made it impossible to miss an important call. 

She picked up the receiver, placing the cold plastic to her ear.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!" screamed an irate chief of police. "THE WORLD'S GONE MAD, AND YOU'RE GALAVANTING ABOUT WITH NO PAGER!" Carmelita scowled. She'd deliberately turned it off. Apparently, she'd picked the wrong day.

But what truly concerned her was the deep undercurrent of barely-contained panic seeping into the angry words. Having worked with the chief for some time, she knew his tones, and this was not his normal wrath. It was as if he was using anger to cover for... for what? She had no real clue. She turned the receiver so that the earpiece was further from her ear, but the other end was still next to her mouth, and the yelling abated somewhat in volume to a tolerable, if still annoying, level. It took her several minutes to calm her employer down and assure him that she'd only been going straight home from work. Just as quickly, she launched into an attempt to pump him for information.

Strangely, he was not forthcoming in the least, but demanded that she return immediately because of some unspecified emergency. Now she had to admit her curiosity was piqued. She verbally nodded her way through the remainder of the conversation and then gathered her jacket, which she'd tossed onto the couch en route to the phone. A weary sigh escaped her muzzle as she locked the front door and made her way back down the walk to her bright red convertible, which hadn't even had time for the engine to go cold. Moments later, she was driving back toward her workplace, and trying very hard to ignore the tingling sensation in her spine from the subconscious red-flags the emergency telephone call had raised...

It took twenty-seven minutes to reach the station, as usual. On the way, Carmelita had started to listen to the radio to see if there was something she should know, but resisted the impulse. Not that it was that difficult to resist when things kept grabbing her attention to the sidelines. If the city could be said to have a collective consciousness, then it was starting to brim over with narrowly-concealed panic. People looked alternately over their shoulders and to the skies, as if anticipating something sneaking up on them. Citizens hurried to and fro with no excess motion. Everything was hurried, as if every second might count. No one lingered, and shops were empty. The crowds were practically nonexistent, and stragglers exchanged nervous glances with her from the sidewalk. Paris was noted for it's night-life, yet here at six in the evening, it was looking more and more like a ghost town.

It was just _wrong_ in a way that was absolutely chilling.

By the time Carmelita reached the station itself, she was on edge to a degree even she found frightening. It was a nameless fear that seemed to compound upon itself for the very fact of being anonymous. The building was old, and a bit drafty at times. It was chilly now physically, to say nothing of the emotional state of the occupancy. The only warmth seemed to come from the sense of urgency that drove everything, sending people rushing down the halls in bursts of activity. Detectives and officers were calling to each other out the doors, down the halls, asking for all kinds of security clearances and contingency plans. The more chatter, she heard, the more alarmed Carmelita became. She didn't know quite what was happening, but it was frightening.

She buttoned her jacket over her halter top and sped up as she made her way through the activity to Chief Rob's office. She opened the door and saw him in a way she'd never seen him before.

He was scared. His eyes told the whole story, even as his mouth moved, forming words to tell her what had happened.

"It seems about five minutes after you left, someone blew Chernobyl to hell." he said without preamble.

There was a leaden pause for about three seconds as the full gravity sunk in.

"Interpol suspects someone?" Carmelita said vacantly, her detective training taking over and reading the subtext where conscious thought failed her. Rob just nodded seriously.

"They don't just suspect someone. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility about ten minutes ago on the Al-Jazeera network, through anonymous video tape as usual. But most of the world won't know about that for another fifty minutes. The United States invoked a contingency rehearsed with CNN, the BBC, the AP, and Reuters for just such an occasion, and the U.N. is to receive one hour's head notice before any announcements on developments are made public. That's to give us some small margin of head-start in managing the panic that's sure to build."

Carmelita swallowed dryly, nodding her head.

"Anything you hear through office sources is now classified indefinitely. We've got one hell of a security nightmare ahead of us, trying to assess if there is any local threat." Carmelita reflected that there was good reason to be worried. Paris had about five nuclear power plants within easy driving range. Not only did the city itself stand in danger should the terrorist organization have taken to targeting power plants, but it could possibly serve as a hub or staging ground.

"What I need you to do is start sifting through our case files, and see if we have any criminals we know about who fit the profile for Al-Qaeda sleeper agents. That's what I've got everyone doing right now. As soon as we've run a good percentage of those, then I'll start diverting our personnel to assist street forces."

Carmelita nodded and went to check out her assigned stack of case work. Rising, she headed for the door without remark.

"Carmelita..." he called to her as she opened the door "take care of yourself." She looked back and saw genuine concern on his face. She forced a sly smile that didn't quite touch her eyes. "I always do."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes, Chapter 3: 

EmberFalcon, Captein Ameila: I'm glad you're enjoying. Updates may be infrequent, it's mostly a function of when I have free time to work on it.

Please excuse the formatting (or lack thereof), most everything I've tried for clear divisions between scenes is stripped out.

And please, please read and review, comment and critique, alliterate and adore, and whatever other cute pairs of words you want to string together to mean 'feedback'.

* * *

_Chapter 3_

In the years since the first Chernobyl accident, the land had become a ghost town for miles around. The only signs of sentient life at all were at the atomic plant itself, and the facilities needed to run it. As such, avoiding authorities was not too difficult at all: a bonus for choosing the most infamous reactor of all to raid.

But now, the figure racing toward the edge of the dead zone found himself dwelling on other thoughts.

_I wish there _were_ authorities chasing me now._ The lone panther thought, gazing into the darkness ahead. He had found his motorcycle right where he'd left it. A geiger counter showed that it was emitting levels of radiation in and of itself that would have been lethal in only a few minutes' exposure. But that did not concern him. He had a mission to complete, and this was the only way. The headlight lit the road ahead with a ghostly glow that seemed to only accentuate the sheer abandoment and solitude felt here. Even if one hadn't known that the entire place was contaminated with radioactivity, there was something deep in the psyche, an instinct of self preservation honed over millions of years, that simply said the place was _wrong_. It was too quiet, an unnatural quiet that raised the hackles on the back of his neck. The trees that lined the road were cast in deathly pale shadow, as if already mourning the losses, by the eerie moonlight. The crisp, blue light that normally shone down had now changed in hue to a sickly yellow from the intermittent toxic clouds now spreading across the sky. That _was_ cause for concern, as one of the clouds could kill him far faster than the radiation dose he'd recieved. It could all be over in seconds if one of the corrosive ones caught up to him, as opposed to the hour or two more he had if he hurried.

He shivered, partly from the crisp night air, and partly from his extremities beginning to shut down. Suddenly he wondered if he really did have even an hour. He gripped the throttle tighter and made the engine revv even higher, the tachometer pushing into the red. He glanced behind him, warned by a primal instinct that he was in danger of being caught. A shaft of moonlight lit a patch of road he had just passed. Already, he could see streaks of yellow starting to waft across it while he sped away. A foul stench of sulfur and hideous chemicals made his nostrils twitch. It was only the barest whiff, but he shuddered both from the sensation and the accompanying fear of what it meant. He turned forward again just in time to see the concrete barrier across the road, laid by the military in the wake of the first disaster.

He swerved in an attempt to catch the gap in the barrier that he used to get through before, but it was too late. The motorcycle flipped three times in the space of a second, throwing him to the ground violently. Something snapped and pain seared up his arms, shoulders, and back. He looked down and saw his right arm hanging at an impossible angle, sending fire shooting through him. He gritted his teeth and tears brimmed in his eyes as he closed them tightly in pain. Using his good arm, he rose on unsteady legs. He dared not even stop long enough to make a sling, but rather let his broken arm hang and tried to ignore the pain. Limping to the motorcycle, he hunted about in the darkness for the case, which had been thrown. It took him nearly two minutes to locate it. Only the extremely rugged construction had saved it, as it had been thrown against a concrete freeway divider. It was scratched and dented, but the shielding had held.

Grabbing the case with his good arm, the panther forced himself into a jog. He had been in the peak of physical shape only hours earlier, but now he was panting for breath at only a mild jog. He could almost perceptibly feel himself slowing. The radioactive chemical soup of gasses he'd helped create with the exlposion now drifted in patches across the road, and he found himself navigating a minefield of the stuff, only visible when it chanced to materialize in a patch of moonlight. Several times he gasped for breath, only to find a lungfull of noxious gasses. Along the sides of the road he saw dead wildlife, and once he even glimpsed a bird seemingly freeze in midair and fall to the forest.

The road seemed to stretch forever into the black night, with houses long ago abandoned looming into view on either side occasionally, partly reclaimed by nature, doors shorn off to help prevent radioactive dust and gasses from accumulating. That would do nothing to stem the tide this time, however.

An eternity of hell seemed to pass. He was shivering violently from the cold, his gasping breath puffing vapor into the chilly night. Coughs wracked his frame every few moments, and more than once he spat blood. His eyes were bloodshot and watering, making it more and more difficult to see. The road in front of him undulated and clouded like a horrid nightmare as his vision became worse and worse. Finally, he blurrily saw the lights of a van parked ahead.

The van was a makeshift containment vehicle. Once upon a time it had been a golden-flake chip truck. Now, it served a far more sinister purpose. The windows had been caulked shut, the doors had a very large lock on them that had been welded into them shoddily. The small rear windows had been painted flat black, and the windshield was a slight yellow tint that spoke of the strength of bullet-proof glass. The entire van had been painted a non-descript off-white. The vehicle idled impatiently, like a predator lurking in wait. Despite all of his training, the panther had a wild impulse to run as if caught, even though he knew this was his goal.

He limped toward the van with all the speed he could muster, his tongue lolling out in time to his gasping breaths. He was burned all over, his skin beneath the fur welting and blistering from the intense radiation he'd recieved. His fur was falling out in patches already, and he looked like some horrific creature come to steal children in the night. The van noticed his approach, and its tires squealed as it quickly backed up to him.

The doors burst open and three figures in white plastic suits jumped out. He could see their hard faces inside the helmets through the faceplates. There was a surreal air about the whole thing, like he couldn't quite believe it was all happening. The suits helped him stagger upright and a hand relieved him of the case he'd carried. The panther let the case go without questioning. He could already feel himself starting to slide. The world was swimming around his head. The suit that had taken the case quickly squirreled it out of sight into the interior of the van. He watched the figure disappear into the dark interior, then noticed one of the others pulling out a silenced pistol. The cold steel pressed against his forehead, almost as cold as the eyes of the one behind it.

He didn't know whether to feel betrayed or relieved when the trigger was pulled.

* * *

Carmelita's soft snores abruptly stopped with a snort. She blinked and blearily tried to focus on the paper in front of her. It was a losing battle. She reached for a cup of steaming mocha to try to combat the lack of sleep, only to find that it was mostly empty and what was left was cold. She downed it anyway, and immediately regretted it. Turning what little attention she could muster back to the paper, she tried to examine the record of a suspected Al-Qaeda terrorist last seen headed across the Chunnel. Authorities had failed to pick the trail back up on the other side, and his whereabouts were unknown. That had been three years ago, but Al-Qaeda had been known to use sleeper agents that stayed in one place for a very long time, sometimes decades. 

The letters swam on the page before her eyes. She blinked forcefully and shook her head, but couldn't focus on the report. Finally she snarled and slammed the paper down in disgust. Then she noticed that the entire office was still buzzing with activity, not in the least lessened by the late hour. Deciding that she really needed a break, Carmelita opened the door and stepped out into the hall, headed for the elevator. The door closed with barely a sound behind her, and she dodged people in the hall who were running from one office to another with stacks and stacks of paper.

Two cups of mocha later, her eyes were wide open, but her mind was still half-asleep. She frequently caught herself reading over a sentence two or three times before realizing that it was the same thing. There was a knock on the door and she prayed it wasn't another stack of papers being delivered to her. Her prayers went unanswered as she opened the door to reveal a haggard looking jackal with a large stack of papers topped with a hand-written post-it note: 'Carmelita - 204A'. She sighed wearily and motioned for him to set it on the desk, not even able to fire up the famed Fox temper. He nodded and sat it in the only open space, turning to face Carmelita with a worried look. She caught the look, but ignored it and held the door open. Khalid walked out, leaving the vixen alone with a mountain of files.

Her decision took all of two seconds.

She leaned out the door and called after him. "Hey!" she stopped, embarassed as she suddenly realized she had no idea what his name was. Ghazi turned and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"Ummm... I really need a break. How about I help you get some of these papers herded around?"

Ghazi smiled, though the fatigue showed, and spoke with a middle-eastern accent. "I would appreciate the help, Ms. Fox." Relieved to find any escape from the mounting tension, Carmelita followed him back to the records office.

The records office was one floor below Carmelita's, run by an old raccoon who could have easily posed as Sly Cooper's grandmother. She had the haggard look of one who did not suffer fools gladly, and everyone knew she ran an extremely tight bearuacracy in her little domain. Tonight was no different, even if the apocalypse did seem to threaten to rain down (literally) upon them. Her dress was perfectly proper and spotless, completely out of place for a catacomb so rundown and musty as the lower archives. But then, few people, herself included, ever had to go down as far as Carmelita planned to do.

Ghazi spoke to the recordkeeper in his middle-eastern tounge. Despite all of her interpol training, Carmelita couldn't place the dialect. It sounded somewhat flowing, despite being quickly punctuated here and there with sharp syllables. The fox nearly did a double-take, as the old crone didn't even bat an eye, but replied in flawless Arabic, to the obvious delight of the new recruit.

Ghazi turned to her with a grin pasted across his otherwise tired face. He was exhausted, as were they all, but the excitement of the job had yet to wear off on him yet, and he had the enthusiasm of youth.

_When did I lose that?_ thought Carmelita with a start. And it bothered her immensely all of a sudden, to realize that she did not, in fact, enjoy what she was doing. She stayed up late nights, but it had been years since she could honestly say she liked what she was doing. _How did I stop loving this?_

Ghazi's expression turned confused as Carmelita's face descended into a sour look. She blinked a few times, pulled back to the conscious world, and forced a smile. The Jackal regarded her with a raised eyebrow, and Carmelita upbraided herself mentally for the lapse in attention. _I'll have to do better than that if I'm going to catch the ones behind all of this... _

The raccoon flipped a switch, and the entire floor lit up shudderingly. Ghazi led her back into the recesses of the archives room, which was feeling more and more like a crypt with every passing step. All it needed was for Ghazi to have a whip and torch, and he'd have been a passable imitation of the Harrison Ford movie. That brought a smile that really did touch her eyes. _I'll have to watch that again soon. I loved that movie._ The Jackal led her onward, taking note of the signs posted at the corners of the shelves. They passed rack after rack, filled with years and years of history. Some of these records would go back as far as the very beginnings of interpol... and further. This had been a police building long before the word 'Interpol' had even been coined.

And it showed. At first, they'd passed large stacks of microfilms, neatly tucked in boxes. The boxes quickly changed to boxes with yellowed labels in the tell-tale monotype of a few decades prior. Further still back in the room, the volumes turned into notebooks, tied shut with string. Manilla folders lined the shelves, but not the cut-rate paper-thin folders they bought now. These folders were thick and heavy, from an era when things weren't made to be thrown away five minutes later. There was a layer of dust covering everything, and an air of disuse. The sterile lighting from a few decrepit flourecent tubes gave the entire scene a surreal atmosphere, as if it were of another time and place -- disturbingly close to the truth. Then, the folders gave way to books. Old books. Some of them were written on the back with languages she recognized, and others were practically unintelligble.

Carmelita chanced to look back. Though lit, the floor lamp from the front desk stood out like a beacon of warmth. It seemed further away than the building itself was big, impossibly distant. She turned back, and it was at that exact moment she caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. Her hand edged toward her shock pistol and she cautiously moved away from Khalid toward the source.

Aisle K was the political crimes section. It was filled every bit as full as the other sections, positively overrun with files chronicaling the life and times of more enemies of the state than one would imagine possible -- if one didn't work for Interopol or intelligence. Carmelita moved in through one of the regularly-spaced cross-rows that interspersed the aisles, connecting them. She looked back toward the desk, and felt a chill run down her spine. She had good eyesight, but as far as she could see, all of the folders had red writing on them, unmistakably Russian. Each and every one had the cold emblem of the Soviet Union stamped neatly in red ink. Each one represented some life that had been torn apart by the two superpowers as they'd taken their ridiculous war to preposterous heights. That the United States had eventually won was cold comfort to the ones who had lost everything in the deal. It felt like a memorial. No, it was less than a memorial. It was like a headstone in an abandoned graveyard: a mute testament to the passing of people whom no one remembered or cared about.

Carmelita shivered and pulled her jacket closer.

"Carmelita?" Khalid called. "I've found the section we need to search. Would you mind helping me?"

Unable to completely repress the shuddering sensations she felt, Carmelita followed him to a file cabinet that could have easily predated World War II. Perhaps it did. The Raccoon at the front would have likely known, but the fox was in no mood to ask. For several minutes, they patiently leafed through the folders, one by one. Even though they were sorted alphabetically, it took a few minutes to find the right one when several files have the same name.

Carmelita whirled around, whipping her shock pistol out and pointing it at the dim recesses of the records room behind them. Ghazi jumped reflexively and turned to stare where she was pointing. There was nothing, but Carmelita's eyes were wide and paniced.

"What is it? Did you see something?" he asked in a whisper. The fox gulped quietly and forced herself to holster the pistol.

"Ghazi, I'm going to check something out." she replied, trying to keep her voice even. The Jackal drew his own weapon, feeling the weight of it reassuringly real and anchoring in this eerie scenario. Their footsteps echoed disturbingly loudly, each footfall sounding like a desecration of a grave.

_What IS it with you and the graveyard imagery, Carm?_ the inspector thought to herself. She approached aisle K, not the least bit reassured for having realized that she was in part overdramatizing. She looked once again up the aisle, filled with towering shelves and volumes upon volumes of old misdeeds. This entire area felt wrong, like a grudge held beyond all reason.

_Clockwerk._ she realized. That's why this is feeling so eerie. It reminds me most of all of him. And why not? Clockwerk had undoubtely had ties with the Soviet Union at some point, he'd hidden himself in Russia, and he carried profound hatred to the point of insanity. She relaxed visibly, and the unreal air of the entire scene evaporated like so much smoke.

...until she turned around. This time she did visibly shudder. Looking _away_ from the front desk, she saw that the shelves went further back still. The lighting was broken back beyond this point, and the entire aisle was lit with what amounted to artificial twilight, punctuated by the occasional half-hearted flicker of the tube. But what had grabbed her attention so forcefully was what now appeared before her in the middle of the floor. A section of the carpet had been pulled up, revealing a trap door. It had been crafted to fall flush against the floor, though not concealed. The carpet had been sliced raggedly, and the door was now open, laying opposite the hole.

"Ghazi..." Carmelita felt her heart racing. "Go tell chief Rob that we need his attention down here right now." she said flatly with barely-contained panic. She forced herself to take another step forward, and then another, until she stood on the brink of the hole. A dank, sour air rose from it, the stench of things best left forgotten. But now she could see quite plainly that someone had no intention of letting it be forgotten: a flashlight's tell-tale conical beam whipped left and right about the place, randomly illuminating locked file cabinets.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her.

"Hello? Is there someone else working in this section?" _Why not? It's probably one of our own people down their busting their butt looking for records..._

She heard a curse muttered in Arabic and frantic footfalls. Her eyes shot wide as she realized what she had just stumbled across. She drew her shock pistol so quickly that it seemed to appear in her hand, like a genie summoned from a bottle. Before she'd even made the conscious decision, she landed on her feet in a wooden plank-floored room filled with filing cabinets of a decisively military dull-olive. Two of the metal containers closest to her had been brute-forced open, rusting locks smashed beyond recognition and cases dented.

Her eyes were still adjusting, but she was keyed up and her ears were as keen as ever. She heard scrambling footsteps in the back corner, and she began dashing blindly through the dark toward their source. A foot appeared in front of her, and she went head over heels, smacking into a wall of file-folders. Compacted as the were by the years of neglect, they mercifully stuck rigidly to their shelves, rather than burying her in papers as the attacker had intended. She bounced up and pointed her pistol at the dark, which had suddenly become as still as death -- too still. She hadn't heard anything at the trap door, and not even Sly Cooper was that silent. The intruder was still somewhere in the room, and trying to keep silent so she wouldn't find him.

She started trying to filter out sounds. Her own breathing and heartbeat, she slowly focused and then ignored. And there was something else... a very low breathing sound. But it was almost impossible to tell where it was coming from. It was everywhere and nowhere, echoing off of the metal cabinets. Suddenly, there was a metallic slam, and light poured in. An old door had been sheared off of its hinges, and an old lightbulb feebly lit a maintenance crawlspace. She just caught the sillhouette of a lithe form slipping up into the duct...

"COOPER!" she yelled, diving for the opening and stuffing her way inside, despite being a touch larger than the one ahead of her. It was a narrow fit, and she swore silently to herself, as she did in every chase, that she would not touch another Mocha until she'd lost some weight. She could almost see the person ahead of her as her own body blocked out what little light there was. She tried futilely to bring her shock pistol to bear, but couldn't get it in front of her. The feet rounded a sharp corner in the ducting, and she saw her chance to bring her pistol out. She pulled it out in the corner space, which just marginally allowed her a little more room, and she fired dead ahead. Impossibly, the one in front of her seemed to sense it coming and crunched to the side. He was six feet in front of her, completely unmissable. She stared dumbfounded as the bolt slipped by him and tore open a section of the duct ahead. Bricks went flying, and she saw stars and neon lights beyond.

_This is insane!_ she thought to herself, trying to ready her pistol again while crawling: no easy task. Suddenly, he slipped down and out of sight, through the brand-new exit she'd created for him. She followed as fast as she could, tearing her leather jacket on the jagged metal edge. She winced at the pain, but held it in check as she braced for the landing some two stories below.

She landed on her feet and wasted no time breaking into a run. The figure hadn't dropped out of sight yet, but was making his way across rooftops. As he jumped between her and the Eifel tower, she saw him framed by the lights.

_That's not Cooper!_ she thought. _but who...?_ She didn't finish the thought, but rather jumped to the next rooftop in hot persuit. The one in front of her was nimble, but she was faster, and she put it to good use. He didn't seem to know where he was going, either, as he sped toward the shady districts. Undeterred, she slowly closed the gap. Several minutes later, she began firing her shock pistol in a wide arc, intended to make him falter. To her utter surprise, this time the bolt flew true, stopping the would-be spy in his tracks. He thudded to the tin roof of a factory with a groan, and she caught up to him in seconds, skidding to a halt.

The man was a jackal, like Ghazi, but from a much rougher upbringing. His face, though paralyzed silent now, spoke volumes about a life that hadn't been easy. Scars criss-crossed his face and arms, and she wondered briefly if any of them had been self-inflicted. He was dressed in second-hand military fatigues that were worn and ragged. Clutched limply in his left hand were the files he'd striven so hard to obtain for the benefit of person or persons unknown.

She picked them up, suddenly extremely curious about what could possibly have been so valuable that Interpol had buried it for a half century and terrorists were seeking it with ferocity. Whatever expectations she'd had, there were dashed. The papers contained nothing but line after line of seemingly scattered numbers and symbols, some of them Russian and some English. They were in a two-column format, with something that looked vaugely like serial numbers on one side, and long strings of random numbers in the other. She stared at it for several moments, willing something to appear out of it, but it was just yellowed pages of paper with dot-matrix printing. Finally, she sighed and handcuffed the man to a convenient pipe. She took a quick note of the location on her personal GPS and headed, files in hand, back toward the Interpol station.

* * *

Ghazi had decided to go home. It had been hours of exhausting work, and interrogations from his own comrades. He knew they meant well, but they were all keyed up now that someone had broken into HQ, and after being tired to start with, to say that they were edgy was putting it mildly. Carmelita had come in some hours earlier, but could offer no explanation for what had happened other than the bare facts. The man had run when she spotted him, but there was no apparent motive other than the handfull of worthless files he'd snatched. Carmeltia speculated he'd grabbed the wrong batch in haste, and Rob had turned this particular case over to her to manage. It was a big entrustment for Carmelita, and no small show of faith. It was, perhaps, a message that Rob was beginning to trust her once more. It had been difficult, following the perpetual failures in the Cooper case, but it seemed she was finally starting to overcome the burden that had dogged her steps. He found himself suddenly growling at the very thought of the ringtail. How dare he! He'd made Carmelita's life a living hell for years, and then deigned to come on to her? Ghazi was outraged on Carmelita's behalf, although somewhat belatedly. 

He sank deeply into a patched leather armchair, the most luxurious piece of furniture in his admittedly run-down apartment. Sadly, it was all he could really afford on a beginner's salary. Not daring to turn on the television, he stretched out and yawned, clad only in his boxers, trying to unwind a bit before bed. A glass of water rested on the end table to his left, and he sipped the cool liquid to calm him down. He closed his eyes and reached for the phone. Nothing cheered him up at the end of the day like a talk with his mother and father...


	4. Chapter 4

Author's notes, Chapter 4

This one is a little shorter than I'd have liked, but my free time hasn't been all that much of late, and I really wanted to go ahead and keep the ball rolling. Please, please, please make a writer's day and review!

Note: That's supposed to be a rhetorical outburst in Carmelita's conversation with the chief, but keeps stripping out the 'extraneous' punctuation so I can't even put a question mark and an exclamation point together.

* * *

_Chapter 4_

Sly Cooper watched and waited as Carmelita handcuffed the man to a steam vent pipe on the roof. A thin cloud of steam churned from the metal pipe into the crisp night against the Parisian skyline, one of many in this area. She picked something up that he'd been carrying, and turned to leave.

_How odd..._ thought the raccoon. _I wonder what _that_ was all about._

Moments earlier, he'd been sitting on a rooftop, thinking. It was something he did often, retreating to the solace that could be found scarcely twenty feet above the busy streets. Up above, the night was much quieter, and the stars shone brightly. It was a perfect place for concealment, true enough, but it was even better for long contemplation. One could hear one's own thoughts in the solitude, leaving one free to sort out life and it's many complications. Granted, many times those complications involved a firery-tempered vixen, but there were others as well. This time it was about Murray.

Sly had known Murray for a great many years. Though Murray wasn't always the sharpest tool in the shed, and admitted so even to himself, there was a depth behind those eyes that went further than he ever let on. Sly had seen it a few times, caught the barest hints, but had never fully known what it meant. Even back in the orphanage, Murray had been unreadable. His disguise was almost perfect: he managed to conceal his deepest feelings more carefully than Sly himself ever could hide his own figure. Bentley had finally outright said what Sly had suspected for a long time; Murray had been through something very traumatic early in life, and part of his 'simple' nature was a front to hide the deeper turmoil that he'd never entirely confronted. It disturbed Sly more than he wanted to admit, but that was another thing the silence was good for: it made it particularly difficult to lie to yourself. Sly hadn't said anything to Murray, never asked him about his distant past, because he'd in some measure sensed there was something dark under the surface that was better left untouched.

Sly looked up at the moon, casting a pale light down on the rooftops. _And now, what do I do for him? Some friend I am, hiding from it up here alone..._

His thoughts were interrupted just as suddenly as the silence. A yell pierced the air, followed by a series of particularly familiar eletrical sounds. Reflexively, Sly had dropped back where his instincts told him he was out of sight, behind an old stone chimney which was belching black smoke to ward off the night air. Scant seconds later, a figure dressed in what appeared to be military fatigues dashed so closely in front of him that he was sent reeling back for better cover. No sooner had he begun backpeddling than a vixen in a brown bomber jacket came charging past, missing him completely, firing her shock pistol wildly at the one who'd passed that way.

They say Raccoons are preoccupied with shiny things, and nothing shone more for him than the moonlight in the vixen's eyes. Small wonder, then, that he felt compelled to follow.

And now, the chase was over, his favorite inspector having been the uncontested victor in the pursuit. Normally, he'd be applauding her mentally on another capture well-done. It was a measure of both professional respect, and more than a little affection. But this time... something felt wrong. Carmelita looked nervous and apprehensive. It was as if she'd been spooked by a ghost. She gingerly stepped around her quarry as if afraid of waking him. Finally, she noted his position on her GPS unit and headed back for HQ.

Sly's curiosity was now up to the sticking point. He slipped forward as she faded back, one more shadow moving in and among the abandoned industrial complex rooftop adornments. It was a vertiable maze of metal and pipes -- the perfect place for a thief to lose a cop. In that sense, this area represented one of the safer ones for him to pick to frequent. He silently glided among the tangled metal tubing, under the water tower and around the smokestacks. Finally, making certain that no Interpol was near, he slipped around and examined the man who'd been chained to the pipe. Sly didn't want to judge, but this was something right out of a political thriller novel. The man looked every bit the archetypical terrorist. Of course, it _could_ have been something else, but the timing was too convenient.

_But what would he hope to accomplish out here? There's nothing worth even hitting out this way. All the real targets are back toward the main city district._

He started to sit down to think some more, when something caught his eye. A breeze was slowly brushing through the area, and a piece of paper was rolling along the street below. That in and of itself wasn't anything exceptional, but this piece looked... different. Something about it was nagging his subconscious, pulling at the corner of his mind. It looked out of place against all of the other junk and litter lining the street, like it wasn't dirty enough to fit in. It looked like it had just been dropped...

Then he remembered the folder and it clicked.

_Ah! It appears the good inspector missed a piece. Perhaps now I can get some idea of what's going on..._

Deftly hooking his cane on an old drainpipe, he leapt and then spiralled down to the ground, chasing a few steps after the errant sheet before finally snatching it. He looked it over, but could discern nothing out of the symbols that covered it.

The same instincts told him, once more, that not only was this important, but that something very big was about to happen, no matter how small it might seem at the moment. Sly knew when to trust such instincts: it was what made him good at what he did. He folded the page in half, and in half again, then tucked safely next to his family's book and headed home.

_Perhaps Bently can make more sense of this than I can..._

* * *

The sun rose reluctantly over the Parisian skyline, casting a cautious light that filtered through the clouds as if the very star itself was nervous. Or maybe it was just the unusual quiet that accompanied it. Many places of business had given temporary leave to all their employees, so the whole city was rather hushed. Sly slipped in the second-story window, visibly fatigued. Once inside, his posture relaxed completely, and he made no further effort be silent as he trod down the stairs. Bentley, as he'd expected, was still at his computer. 

Sly walked up behind the turtle and fished out the paper. Bently turned in his seat and accepted it, giving the sheet a critical eye. Sly could almost hear the gears turning already. He started to say something, but was interrupted by a cavernous yawn. Blinking a few times, Sly asked Bentley to see what he could make of it. The turtle nodded and returned to his screen. Sly needed no second bidding to loft himself to his bedroom.

* * *

Carmelita sank into the matress with an exhausted sigh, it's pillowy embrace folding around her. She pulled a wrinkled blanket over her and shut her eyes. The sunlight shone in her face, making her screw her eyes shut tighter. When that failed, she got up angrily and pulled the shades down, returning the room to darkness. Sleep claimed her before she even hit the pillow. 

The vixen awoke with a start to a noise. A meaty hand clamped on her muzzle while a second hand tied it shut with duct tape. Her eyes went wide as she fully wrapped her mind around what was happening. She lashed out with an arm and caught someone in the stomach. The figure in black went down with groan. On the other side, another figured grabbed her arms and muttered something in a language she didn't understand. On the other side of the bedroom door, she heard small crashes and shuffling as someone ransacked her house. Rising, the first figure grabbed her and lifted her into a chair while the second tied her to it with more duct tape, the ripping sound as it unwound loud against the still night. Once she was secured, the two men left to assist in the search.

Several tense minutes passed. The interpol inspector silently thanked all the deities she could name that she'd still been wearing her normal outfit, rather than changing into a night gown as she frequently did. Hidden in a sheath on her right thigh was a dagger, a weapon she held in reserve for an occasion where it might be her only hope. This was looking suspiciously like such a time. Quietly, she strained and wiggled around until she could slip it free from the holster, then attacked the duct tape, shredding it in only moments. She freed her hands, and then her feet, but stopped dead still when the door flew open.

A mouse stood in the doorway, face grim. He walked forward and then motioned to the beefy figures behind him, and they left. Carmelita pushed her arms and legs back into position, praying that he wouldn't notice she'd cut them free. He stepped forward with a measured pace and cold eyes.

"Miss Fox, we need to discuss the location of some files you have taken." he said in a clipped, middle-eastern accent. He produced a knife and with a quick flicking motion of his wrist, severed the tape holding her silent.

"I will ask you once, Inspector, so pay careful attention. Where are the files?"

Carmelita spat at him. His eyes narrowed cruelly. Before she could react, he slapped her across the face, hard. She landed over sideways and he pulled the chair back up with a strength that his size effectively hid. She tasted blood in her mouth, and knew he meant business. The mouse leaned in close, until his eyes were staring right into hers, his nose almost touching.

"Where are the files?" he asked again, voice laden with steel.

Carmelita glared at him. He raised his hand to strike her again, but this time the vixen was ready. In one smooth motion she drew the dagger again and drove it into his chest, sinking it to the hilt. The mouse's eyes went wide and he gasped, unable to grasp what had just happened. Carmelita growled dangerously at him and jerked the knife back out. The interregator twitched spasmodically a few times and then crumpled softly the floor. Carmelita tossed the knife aside and grabbed her shock pistol on the nightstand. She turned and faced the door, but it was closed, and no one yet seemed to realize that the questioning had gone awry. She quickly picked up the phone on the dresser and dialed in the emergency code, then left it hanging off the hook. That would have interpol here within minutes, she knew.

Aiming her gun at the door and steeling herself, she kicked it down and then began firing at anything that moved. Several figures ran for the door, taken by surprise, and one dropped the floor, raising an automatic rifle. Carmelita dove for the floor as he fired at waist-height, covering their escape. She got up and chased them out the front door, which had been sheared off it's hinges, but arrived just in time to hear the screech of tires as a nondescript van with no license plate rocketed off into the night.

Still shaking slightly after the adrenaline rush of the moment had worn off, she stood there until the cop cars rolled up, and she was escorted quickly back to the station...

* * *

To say that Chief Rob was angry was an understatement. He screamed at the top of his lungs at a handfull of officers who had the bad fortune to be in charge of Interpol internal security. Carmelita winced more than a few times, and she was sitting outside the door. She could only imagine the emotions of the ones on the other side. She'd been chewed out before, but this was an order of magnitude above and beyond anything she'd ever heard the Chief dish out to anyone. 

There was a slamming sound inside, and the door flew open, with several officers all but bolting out of the office. Carmelita backed up against the wall to keep from being run over as they made their hurried escapes from his wrath. She was still anxious and tense from the ordeal, and so she looked around pensively. That was how she saw the Chief sink back into his old leather swivel chair with a groan.

"Carmelita..." he said softly, the anger gone from his voice. "Come in here and close the door."

Inspector Fox did as bidden, closing the door nervously. Rob stood up and pulled down the window shade, an odd thing to do at night. She opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but he beat her to the punch.

"I'm really sorry, Carmelita. That shouldn't have happened." he said, and he sounded truly apologetic. "It's an embarassment to the department that we allowed this to happen to one of our finest officers." Now Carmelita was genuinely surprised. Everyone knew about the weekly chewing-out for the Cooper case. She knew she was one of the better officers they had, but to hear it from Rob was almost unbelievable.

"But..." he continued "Sad as it is, it's bound to happen again."

Carmelita shot him a quizzical look. "How so? Surely not here at the headquarters..."

"They already came here once looking for that file." he pointed out. "But that's not what concerns me." He leaned in close and lowered his voice. "There's a leak in the department, Carmelita. I don't know who, and I don't know how, but _someone_ is giving inside information. That means you're not safe here, any more so than you were at your house."

"They could have looked me up in the phone book, Chief." she said. "I'm not exactly inconspicuous..."

"But how would they have known about the file? They knew you had it, and had it tonight. The only way they could have known that was if they had an inside source."

"The computer system?"

He shook his head. "For security reasons, I never entered it into the system. Not until we knew what we were dealing with. It looks like I was right."

Carmelita looked very nervous indeed. The safety of Interpol was something she took for granted, even with Cooper's little visits to her office. Whatever the self-titled master thief might have been, violent was not it. As such, she felt relatively secure here. The thought that it wasn't safe anymore...

"What do we do?" she asked. Clearly, Rob had something in mind.

"I'm going to track down the source of this leak very carefully." he said. Carmelita nodded.

"_YOU_ are getting out of town." he added.

"**WHAT!**" She stood up, jaw open.

Rob grabbed her mouth with one hand, holding it shut, and held a finger over his lips with the other.

"QUIET!" he hissed. "Until I know more, everyone here is potentially suspect." He gave a meaningful glance at his secretary's desk, on the other side of the wall. He let go. "Keep your voice down." he admonished.

"But I can't just leave!" she protested.

"You can, and you will. I'm going to give you a monetary allowance from Interpol funds. You're also on sick leave until further notice. Now listen carefully, because I'm going to tell you how to leave. Understood?"

Carmelita nodded dumbly, unable to really grasp that it was, in fact, happening.

"Good. When I tell you, you get up and leave this office. I have the files here." He held up the folder. "We found it in your living room. Hide it under your jacket and walk to your car. Don't stop to talk to anyone, and most especially tell no one where you're going. Get in your car and drive about half an hour from here before stopping for gas. Remove the license plate from your car there, and toss it in the trunk. Make sure you have your badge in case you're stopped, but hide it at all other times.

"Go to some other major city outside French borders, but don't make up your mind until you're outside Paris, even if it means circling around a bit to get there. Talk to no one if you can absolutely help it, pay with the credit card at the gas station so you don't have to go in, and pay with cash everywhere else." Rob handed her a roll of bills and a credit card. Carmelita was starting to shake. This was all happening too fast!

"Find a hotel somewhere close to an Interpol branch, and stay there under a false name. Do not call anyone from your room. When you get there, call me from a payphone no closer than five blocks from your hotel. Stay indoors or in the car after dark, and keep your shock pistol with you at all times. If you think you're being followed, find a very large, aware crowd and stay in the middle of it until you can call for help. Try to find a shopping mall, and stay in a very visible location where numbers will help keep you safe. Call no one at the office except me, and only at my office number. I will answer the phone, speak to no one else, not even to acknowledge that you picked up." He handed the folder to Carmelita.

"Now go. Walk, don't run, and DO NOT stop by your office on the way down." She bit her lip and turned, hiding the folder under her jacket. She could not recall being more scared in her life.

"And Carmelita? ...please be careful..." he said as she reached for the doorknob.

She mechanically walked down the hall, feeling like she was in a confused whirlwind. People were still bustling about, but now it was like being in a crowd of strangers, any of whom might be waiting for a chance to get her alone behind a door... She shuddered and walked a little faster toward the elevator. Several people looked like they were about to stop and ask her how she was, but she brushed them off and kept going without stopping to talk. The halls seemed to stretch endlessly as she went, time slowing to a crawl, the very universe conspiring to keep her from getting away. After what seemed like a subjective eternity, she reached the elevator doors.

She almost jumped backwards when the gleaming chrome metal slid aside to reveal Ghazi, who had just been about to walk out.

"Oh! Inspector Fox! Are you feeling any better?" he said, his face painted with concern.

She muttered something about still being jittery.

"Ah. That I can understand. Would you prefer some company? I often find it makes it easier to relax with a good friend..." he offered.

_Don't stop to talk to anyone..._ Chief Rob's voice played over again in her mind. And hadn't Ghazi been there when the first break-in occurred? The connection was chilling, and the fact that he was very obviously middle-eastern did little to help. She wanted to kick herself for stereotyping, but at the moment found she couldn't help it. When her life might be at stake...

"No, I'll be just fine, thank you." She said curtly, pushing past him into the elevator. He turned with a surprised look, but the doors shut just inches in front of his nose and the elevator politely chimed, effectively ending the conversation.

"It was only a suggestion..." he said in a defeated voice to no one in particular...

The doors opened again in the lobby, and Carmelita walked quickly across the polished marble, her booted footsteps echoing and making it sound even more isolated. She shivered again and pushed the panic bar on the door. It obediently swung open, and she tried to look calmer than she was as she walked to her car.

As the engine hummed to life, a second vehicle slowly rolled out of the shadows behind a dumpster, headlights off...


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Notes, Chapter 5: I'd like to thank everyone for reviewing. It's really good to see that people actually like the story. Heiduska: Heehee. You'd better get used to action, because there's more to come... (not that I think you'll be sorry about it) WolfKeeper989: Ask and ye shall recieve. RatchetSly: I'm glad you like. I've considered trying to get something published once or twice, but I have a problem getting things finished. I often start stories and don't finish. I'm hoping will help keep me on track this time. Oh, and I'll try that with the exclamation point. Thanks for the tip! And now, on with the show...

* * *

_Chapter 5_

Sly awoke to a knock on his door. The sun was sinking low on the horizon, sending magenta hues streaming through his window and coloring the peeling, antiquated wallpaper to a rose tint. Everything cast long shadows as the world outside his window wound down for the day. He blinked owlishly and propped up on one elbow. Again, the knocking, more insistent this time. Sly cleared his throat and called out.

"Come in."

The door opened, revealing the small turtle Sly knew all too well.

"Something wrong, Bentz?" Sly asked, using the nickname Bentley seemed to like.

"Errr... Well, yes. We need to pull off a job tonight, so you'll need to--"

"What!" Sly asked, incredulous. "What happened to lying low while Paris is crawling with cops?"

"I know Sly, I know. I didn't want to try it now either, but we may not have a choice. I found references last night to a new algorithm being developed by Interpol. It can take the locations of crimes and determine the probable location of the criminal's base of operations. That's what I was investigating so intently when you came in last night."

"And after all the heists we've pulled off from here over time..." Sly started, making the connection.

"When they finish it, this safe-house will be a sitting duck. But we don't have the money to start another one just yet. That's where the job tonight comes in."

Sly sat all the way up. "I'm listening."

Bentley leaned against the wall. "The Hope Diamond, the world's largest blue diamond, is currently on loan from the United States' Smithsonian Institute to the Paris Museum of Natural History."

Sly smirked. "No problem there. I know that place like the back of my hand."

"Not so fast." Bentley interjected, holding up a finger. "They've stepped up security dramatically. This one won't be easy by any means."

"Always a catch, isn't there?" Sly said, sighing.

The turtle nodded, agreeing. "It would seem that way, yes. To get in, you'll have to--"

Sly waved his hand. "Whoa, whoa. Too much upfront. Give me the briefing once I'm in position."

"Alright, Sly. Murray and I will wait outside in the van while you pull off the heist. I still have our old link tap set up, so I should be able to do everything computer-related without even going inside."

With that, Bentley turned to leave. Sly called after him.

"Hey, Bentley, did you find out anything about those freaky numbers?"

Bentley turned and poked his head back in the door. "No, I haven't. I tried several possibilities, but nothing panned out. They're starting to look more and more like Cryllic gibberish."

Sly shook his head. "No, I saw the look on Carmelita's face when she retrieved them from that guy. Whatever they are, they're important. That much I know."

"I'll keep looking, but I'm not getting anywhere with them." He hesitated for a moment, as if debating whether or not to add a thought. "And... they're giving me the creeps, too. They may _look_ like gibberish, but I have to agree that there does seem to be a purpose. Given the timing... it doesn't bode well at all."

"You suspect something?"

"I always suspect something, but no, nothing specific this time. Just a feeling that keeps creeping up."

"Alright, just be careful."

"I always am."

And Sly was alone again. He stood up and changed out of the nightshirt he wore, donning the blue jacket. He stepped in front of the dusty vanity that sat against the far wall, and tied his mask on. Admittedly, it was more of a dramatic touch than any real attempt to keep his identity a secret, as a mask like that would do little to fool anyone who later saw him without it. It had worked on Carmelita... but he had suspicions of his own about why _that_ had worked. A smile crept onto his face, as it always did when remembering the dance. _If only I'd finished it with a kiss..._ He quickly ran a comb through his head ruff and put on his cap, then strapped the holster he'd made for his family's legacy onto his thigh, the weight of the ancient book reassuring. A matching pair of soft-soled boots later, and he was ready. He picked up his cane by the door and headed downstairs.

* * *

Murray climbed onto patched faux-leather seat as was his custom, taking his place behind the steering wheel. Although Bentley had learned how to drive, Murray didn't feel his job was in any danger. After all, it's one thing to drive down the freeway in moderate traffic, but totally another to scream down it dodging cars with Interpol on your tail and still manage to lose them. He took out his keys, watching the fob swing and jangle among them. The sticker bearing his logo was starting to peel, revealing the words "Ban... o... Par...". He mashed the sticker back into place, recalling how long he'd had to beg Bentley to draw it on the computer and print it out. The turtle opened the rear doors and got in, as Sly opened the passenger door. The pink hippo symbol turned in the ignition, and soon the van (newly repainted silver with a cleaning company logo) trundled into the night.

All the way there, Sly felt uneasy. Even with all the protection, and the favors working for him such as the blessings of preoccupied Interpol... it didn't feel right. Somewhere, deep in his mind (or perhaps deeper than that) something told him that this was wrong. Normally, he loved the thrill of a crisp night and moving out, filled with suspense. But at the moment, all he wanted to do was run home, even though he knew they really needed the money. He was disfocused, too: a very bad sign. A lapse of concentration at the critical moment could land him behind bars. Yet his attention was being distracted by tiny little things: the type of rattle a mother was handing to a baby, a billboard advertising milk, the headlights of a car headed straight at...

"LOOK OUT!" Sly yelled as he grabbed the wheel and pulled them back into the other lane. There was a screech of tires as the van leaned heavily to the side, and the car headed for them skidded out of the way. The hippo snapped back as if from a trance, and with a supreme effort, Murray fought the van as it tried to roll when they turned back straight. Several moments later, when Sly's heartrate had slid below 180 and he had managed to regain feeling again, he turned to Murray and gave a questioning stare.

"Sorry..." rumbled the big man. "I didn't mean to zone out like that. One moment I was driving, and the next..." Sly put a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, Murray. I'm feeling distracted tonight too. I don't know what it is." Murray managed a weak nod, never taking his eyes, which appeared fixed, distant, and paranoid, off of the road in front of them. _This is wrong..._ he thought.

* * *

_This is wrong..._ she thought. _That same pair of headlights has been behind me for the past five miles. On the freeway, maybe, but in downtown Paris, making turns?_ Quickly, she tried to think of what to do if she was being followed. In her mind, she reviewed all of her traffic-persuit training. The trouble was that everything she knew was designed to help her close the gap, not widen it! Then she realized she was thinking wrong. She had to think how to deliberately defeat the tactics she'd been taught. _That's not going to be easy..._ she realized. Interpol trained officers well. _First, though, let's make sure they're really following me, though._ That was easy enough.

She turned right at the next light, not really caring where it took her so much as the direction. For a moment, she thought she'd been mistaken, but then she saw the all-too-familiar lights again. Once more, right at the next light, once more the headlights. _Well that clinches it. There is no _way _they'd make a U-turn in the same spot I did. I'm being followed._ Suddenly, she had an epiphany. _The trains! I'll head toward the North side of town, and dart behind a train. That'll keep 'em occupied._ Just as quickly she realized it wouldn't work: it was very unlikely she'd find one timed just right to allow her to use it as a gate, and even so it would be insanely dangerous.

The light in front of her turned red, and she stopped, irritated at the guy in front of her. The headlights pulled up in her rearview mirror until she could see the grill emblem between them. A grim face with predatory eyes was just visible above the steering wheel. Down the crossing street, to the left, the light turned green at the next block and a flood of cars came toward the intersection. On a moment of impulse, Carmelita punched the accellerator and spun the wheel, dashing onto the sidewalk. "Let's see you catch this!" she yelled as she swerved around the car in front of her and narrowly dodged a car already in the intersection, illiciting horns and strings of curses from other cars. She floored the gas pedal, streaking away into the night with all five-hundred horses and police-grade cooling system doing their finest. She laughed as the adrenaline coursed through her veins. She looked back into her rearview mirror just in time to see the van plunge through the stream of traffic, getting clipped on the rear. Her laughter turned to horror as she saw it fishtail and the car that hit it spun out of control, slamming into a store full of people. This time it was her turn to curse as the van regained control and sped up to catch her.

She looked forward again just in time to throw on the brakes at the next redlight. Cars were screaming past, and there was no way she could pull it off again. The van headlights came closer and closer, regaining the ground lost. It was half the length of the block away from her when she realized it had no intent of slowing down! She slammed the accelerator again, dodging out into the oncoming lane and through the intersection, but not fast enough. The van smacked her trunk, sending her spinning into the oncoming lane of the traffic that did have right-of-way. She pulled out of it and dodged into what was now 'her' lane, effectively having been forced into a turn. The van was too far across the intersection to manage a turn and raced to the next light. She heard a skid even as she turned once again, doubling back the way she'd come. _If I can just reach the next light or alley, I can lose them!_ she thought, now out of the van's line of sight for just a moment. But before the next intersection came up, she saw the headlights turn onto her street. This was a back-road near the waterfront: little traffic and almost no stoplights. It would be a flat-out run to the next point of safety, but one she could probably win in her police-modded sports car. She once again floored the gas, racing faster and faster into the night. The van struggled to keep up, but was slowly losing ground. Up ahead, she darted onto a street that would carry her back into the main of downtown. The van caught the turn and persued, but not before she'd gained a full intersection.

The lights turned red, and they waited once more, both revving engines like drag racers, seperated by scarcely a hundred meters. His light turned green five seconds before hers, and once again he was on her tail closely as she sped toward anywhere that would get her to safety. Suddenly, she saw an exit for the freeway, and decided it would buy her time to think. At least there she would be able to drive fast and gain ground. Plus, the major portion of the freeway was was circle around Paris. She could stall indefinitely if she had to. She raced on the upramp, still accellerating as she merged into the main stream of traffic.

_Eat my dust!_ she thought as she took off like an arrow from a bow, weaving among the cars. Suddenly, the engine sputtered. _Oh God... NO!_ she thought as the power left the pedal. Her face drained as she looked down and saw the engine temperature gauge in the red. The collision with the van must have hurt the cooling power system, installed in the front of the trunk. She turned the key again, hoping it would restart, but she didn't even hear a half-hearted whirring. She strained and turned the wheel with all her might as the power-steering was no longer assisting her. To top it all off, she saw the dreaded headlights, tinged yellow and flecked with dead insects, roaring up behind her.

The former impact had been only a love-tap as compared to this. The jar mashed her into the seat, and then she slammed forward into the steering wheel, the airbag puffing out and the noxious gasses from it burning her throat and eyes. The bright red convertable skidded off to the side, onto the emergency strip in a shower of gravels. The van came to a stop behind her. She unfastened her seatbelt and jumped out of the car, cutting her hands on the 'safety glass' but trying desperately to get away from the van. Even as the doors opened, she knew it was futile. Men in dark black chased her, yelling at her to stop with thick accents. She whirled, shock pistol drawn and fired. One of the men bent to the ground, twitching spastically, but the other was too fast. He knocked the pistol out of her hand with a well-placed kick. Carmelita punched him in the nose, and he reeled backward, but another grabbed her from behind, pulling both of her arms down and roughly shoving her to the gravels. The one that punched her grabbed her also and the two of them dragged her to the back of the van. There, they handcuffed her in full view of all the traffic. _Why doesn't someone stop them?_ she thought as the cars whizzed by. Then, she was uncerimoniously tossed inside, where two more men pointed guns in her face and yelled at her to shut up and stay still.

* * *

"Be quiet and sit still!" yelled Murray, getting irritated at Sly more by the moment "You're making it hard to drive!"

"We're almost there!" added Bentley. "We can't turn back now."

"We can, and we will!" demanded Sly. "Look, I don't know how to explain it either, but this is just all _wrong_! If we try this tonight, something is going to go horribly wrong!"

"You have no scientific basis for this at all!" Bentley yelled. "We have to have that money or we're going to be found! Do you really want Carmelita sneering at you from the other side of bars?" "Don't answer that!" he quickly added, shaking his head.

Sly's face paled. "STOP THE VAN!" he yelled. Bentley looked at him, furious now. "How many..."

"**STOP THE VAN!**" Sly shrieked again. This time, Murray applied the brakes, and the van skidded to a halt on the emergency strip. Nearly a quarter mile behind them, there was an accident involving a very familiar red convertable.

"What is it?" Murray and Bentley asked as one, surprised at the hysterical antics of their friend. Bentley was starting to wonder if Sly was losing it.

"CARMELITA! THEY'RE KIDNAPPING HER! Murray, put it in reverse!"


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Notes, Chapter 6:

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for commenting. I'm glad to see this is picking up some steam. With the holidays, I now have a bit more time to write, and hopefully it will be reflected in more chapters going online. I know this chapter is slightly shorter, but it seemed a natural breaking point and I'm hoping to get them out a little more frequently too. As always, reviews are requested.

Heiduska: Soon enough for you? (grin)

RatchetSly: Psychopathic doesn't do it justice. This is really just a warm-up for the big game, so hold onto your hat!

* * *

_Chapter 6_

Murray mashed the clutch in and slammed the gearshift into reverse. Gravels spun out from under the tires and cars dodged into the other lane in a panic as the disguised Cooper van roared backwards to the scene of the 'accident'. Carmelita's attackers, realizing they'd been spotted, grabbed something out of the front seat, which looked suspiciously like a file folder, and ran for the other van. Sly's door flew open and he ran like a crazed maniac toward the kidnappers' van.

Only his finely-honed reflexes saved him as the headlights which had chased Carmelita surged forward toward the raccoon. Jumping to the side and rolling into the guard-rail, he just barely missed being clipped by the van. Murray wasn't so lucky. Van met van in passing, and the Cooper van now sported a dented corner. Murray took a face dive into the steering wheel, and sat up, furious.

"Oh you did **_NOT_** just hit my van..."

Sly got to his feet just in time to see the hit, and ran to his van, noticing that the blue paint was showing under the silvery paint job. The tires showered him in gravel, making him shield his face with his left hand. He swung his cane with his right, just barely catching the back door handles as the van roared forward like a wounded beast. Sly took two running steps to match speeds and then jumped, planting his feet on the back bumper.

Crouching with an apparent ease made possible by all the practice he'd had in the snowy wastes of the far North, he leapt up onto the top of the van and crawled forward. By now the van was approaching top speed, careening through traffic like mad, trying to catch up to the other van which was doing the same. Sly had to shift his weight very carefully, surfing the van as it darted in and out of traffic, sometimes even skidding onto the emergency strip to pass a stubborn car. From inside, Sly could hear Bentley yelling at Murray about delicate equipment. Ignoring him, Murray continued to redline the Cooper van to catch up with the ones who had done such an injustice.

Sly climed above the driver's window and used his cane to reach down and peck Murray on the head.

"When you get close, match speeds so I can jump!" Sly yelled, barely audible over the rushing wind. Murray snarled at him, but refocused his anger onto the target and mashed the accellerator to the floor with his considerable weight. The van once again topped itself and pushed forward with renewed drive.

After several harrowing minutes, Murray triumped and banged the front bumper into the rear of the van ahead. Sly was jolted, nearly losing his footing, but managing to turn it into a jump that carried him to the other van... almost. The wind shortened his jump just a small amount, and he snagged a light on the top with his cane. The white van fishtailed, losing control after being tapped at such high speed, but to the driver's credit, he regained control and tried to pull ahead again. But Murray was not to be deterred this time, and matched him move for move.

Sly pulled himself onto the top of the van. There was a tense moment where he tried to figure out just how to get down inside, before a gigantic hole tore outward next to his foot.

* * *

Carmelita reeled from the slap, landing on the printed metal floor of the van. Blood, hot with fury, trickled from her nose. She tried to pick herself up, but couldn't bring her tied hands in front of her. She was hauled up roughly by the hair and tossed back onto the cold metal bench lining the side of the rear compartment.

"Do not lie to me! We have the folder already!" Yelled her tormenter, furious. "I'm going to ask you again. And this time, if you don't answer, it's going to get really ugly..." To drive the point home, he pulled out a knife and started menacing her with it, making vauge cutting gestures. "Who told you to run?" he demanded. Carmelita just snarled at him again, the same response that had drawn such fury before. The man, dressed in concealing black commando garb, grabbed her throat with one hand, pinning her head to the wall.

"You obviously can't hear anyway, so you must not need these!" He put the knife to her ear, flattened against the cold steel, and pressed down. Carmelita screamed in pain just as the van lurched forward, throwing everyone to the floor, barely sparing her from being mutilated. She scrabbled around in the floor for the knife, but suddenly found it pointed at her nose. Her tormentor opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off as a heavy thud on the roof drew everyone's attention. He reflexively turned to see what was happening, and that was when Carmelita slammed her bound feet into his groin. He staggered backward as she fell off the bench and into the floor. Unable to speak, the leader gestured frantically to the ceiling. One of the men raised a shotgun and fired at where the noise had been...

* * *

Murray watched Sly recoil as the blast tore through the roof, the metal opening like a flower right next to him. He swore softly while Bentley tried to think of anything he could do. Above the din and gunshots, Murray recognized the wail of police sirens: Interpol was about to catch up. Finally, Bentley hit upon inspiration. Manning the recently rebuilt turret, he hit the lever to raise it. The cover blew open, tearing off some of the paint around it to reveal the true color beneath. A large chaingun potruded just far enough out of the roof to be of assistance. Bentley lined up the sights on the van and took aim, turning the infrared sights on. Inside the van, several figures showed up, but most of them were in the floor, indistinguishable. One, however, showed up quite clearly. The smoking barrel of the shotgun showed a hot white amid the dull red movement. Bentley swung the chaingun slightly, and opened fire. The man pumped the shotgun's action, readying a second blast at Sly, and then paused. His eyes widened as the shock of twenty rounds tearing his body open dawned on him, realization not quite setting in before his life had already fled. The front wall of the compartment was now blood-splattered, and the front windshield destroyed. The driver's right arm hung in ruined shreds, the rounds having passed through the entire vehicle, but he did his level best to keep up with one arm.

* * *

Sly's eyes shot wide open as he heard the chaingun spout off a burst of fire. He turned around to see Bentley flash him a thumbs-up. Sly nodded and dove for the hole the shotgun had made, trying to squim through into the compartment below, cane-first. He hung half-way inside, feet stuck above him, when one of the other men grabbed the knife and slashed at him. Carmelita's blood mingled with Sly's as the knife scored an angry red wound onto his chest. Maneuvering around as best he could, Sly smashed his cane into the panther's nose, then hooked it around his neck and twisted. A sharp crack, and the life faded from the panther's eyes. Sly immediately regretted it, but he'd been forced into a corner.

He wiggled down further, trying to get all the way in, when Carmelita managed to stand up. She looked at him angrily, as if it infuriated her that he, of all people, would arrive to save her. But she quickly got her priorities in order and her glare softened a bit. She reached out to him with both hands, and he tried to pull her up. Instead, right the opposite happened, as he suddenly plopped down into the van, landing with a thud on his head. He slowly got up, rubbing his head with one hand, and gestured to the other men.

"They'll wake up with a headache they won't soon forget, but they'll live." she said coldly. Sly nodded and kicked the rear doors. They exploded outward and Murray drew back a bit, startled. But when he saw the two of them ready to go, he pulled up once again. Interpol, meanwhile, had contributed vans of it's own to the disaster-in-progress, which were all busily commanding both of the criminal vans to halt over megaphones.

"I guess this is your stop." Sly said to Carmelita. She looked relieved... and then suddenly gasped as if a horrible realization had come to her.

"No! I can't go back!" she blurted.

Sly nearly fell backwards in surprise. Whatever he might have expected from the firery vixen, that was most certainly not it. Reading the look on his face, Carmelita followed up.

"Look, I can't go back to them right now. It's not safe! I'll explain later, but you'll have to trust me!"

Sly gave her a disgusted look that spoke volumes about how much he felt he could trust her. No matter what he did for her or for the world at large, at the end of the day, she had always been ready to arrest him and claim the lion's share of the credit. Carmelita gritted her teeth, realizing what he must be thinking. Forcing a calming breath, she adopted the most sincere look she could muster and went for the alternative approach.

"Sly, you always wanted me to trust you, despite the fact that everything I know, every instinct tells me not to." Sly opened his mouth as if to protest, but she continued. "But that trust goes both ways. If you want me to trust you, then you're going to have to trust me too!"

Their eyes met, and for a moment, they were completely silent. The wind rushed by, the sirens wailed, officers were screaming demands... but they didn't notice. Instead, their gazes locked, and Sly stared deep into her eyes. For once... she seemed genuine.

"Okay, I'll help you." Sly said simply, bring his cane up and deftly untying the ropes that bound her with a few quick twists. Carmelita arched her eyebrows in surprise: that was one thing she certainly hadn't known he could do. Sly then jumped back onto the Cooper van, motioning Carmelita to follow. She looked at him, but then turned and dashed back inside. Sly squinted, trying to see into the dark van. She returned just a heartbeat later, holding a file folder. The same file folder, Sly noted, that she'd taken from that man the other night. Carmelita deftly landed on the roof of the Cooper van, and yelled.

"Bentley! Waste that van!" she commanded angrily, pointing to the van in front of them. Bentley gulped and shook his head. She stormed toward the turret, but Sly grabbed her shoulder.

"Let Interpol handle it. They might find something important." He cautioned.

"I _am_ Interpol!" she countered, anger gleaming in her eyes.

"No, you're not." Sly insisted. "I don't know why, but the very fact that you need us to get you away from them says that you're not. We've already hurt them badly enough, now let Interpol pump them for information while we make a getaway. Besides, it gives them something else to worry about."

Carmelita looked like she was going to take his head off, but relented and allowed Sly to lead her to the open hatch into the Cooper van. Bentley retracted the turret, and its lid closed automatically as it sank out of sight. Sly pulled the hatch closed as Carmelita jumped down inside, telling Murray to lose interpol. Murray's face set, and he swerved out and around the other van, pulling away and into the busy traffic.

Sly pulled out a first-aid kit, and Bentley convinced him to sit down and let him do it. Bentley first checked Sly's chest wound, as it looked the most serious, despite Sly's objections. He lifted his shirt while Bentley treated him. The slash was superficial, thankfully, though it looked very nasty indeed. Bentley quickly cleaned with an anesthetic-antibiotic wipe and wound some gauze around his chest. Sly turned just in time to see Carmelita looking out of the corner of his eye. She quickly developed an intense interest in a random piece of equipment on the wall when he noticed.

"Okay, okay. I'm patched up, Bentz, now please help Carmelita?" Sly complained, striving not to let the frustration in his voice show. Bentley just nodded and tended to her ear. The knife had come very close to severing it entirely, though the last-second lurch had kept it from becoming more than a shallow cut. Bentley cleaned this too, and bandaged her ear. He also gave her some tissues to wipe her nose, but found no broken bones. Finally satisfied that the two were not in serious danger, he went back to his computer station to monitor the situation.

Neither Sly nor Carmelita said a word for the entire trip back to the safehouse...


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Notes, Chapter 7:

Dark Jackal: Thank you, thank you, and again thank you. I greatly appreciate it to see people review and enjoy the story so much. Little else could motivate me in quite the same way, and I shall do my best to see that what has started will continue to live up to the opening.

inuyashlovr: Thank you. I try.

WolfKeeper989: Here ya go. Hopefully I can keep serving these up fairly frequently so that this doesn't stagnate like some of the other stories I've started.

Heiduska: Wish granted. Expect lots of action, too. These guys don't play by the rules, and have resources beyond even what Interpol has...

RatchetSly: I'm glad you like. As noted before, more action to come, and probably lots and lots of guns too.

(Try to imagine some good emoticons following those, because I'd put them there if the site wasn't constantly stripping them out.)

And in case I haven't emphasised it enough, thank you again everyone for reading and reviewing. Now, on with the show...

* * *

_Chapter 7_

The Cooper van pulled up to the Safehouse at an ungodly hour of the morning. Despite the temporary alliance, Sly had insisted that Carmelita not know the way to their building, even if she saw it and it's surroundings in their entirity. Once bitten, twice shy... Since they would be moving soon, he knew it wouldn't matter if she found enough of a location to track it down quickly once she got back to her office. They would be long gone by then, and not a trace would remain that could be used to follow them to their new location: Bentley would see to that.

_It's easier to just give her no opportunity for betrayal at all. Keeps her from being conflicted anyway._ Sly thought as the van pulled into the deeper dark of the garage. Murray shut the engine off, and the doors opened. Sly almost -- almost -- expected Carmelita to jump out and call for backup. But she got up wearily and filed out right behind he and the turtle, fatigue etched onto her face. Her ears drooped, and her eyes were ringed with dark circles that showed even beneath the firery fur. It had been a long, fruitless night for all of them, and they really wanted nothing so much as a good bed and a long sleep, even the besieged policewoman.

The garage door closed behind them and the group somberly edged around the shelves filled with mechanical equipment of the type intrinsic to garages. Bentley resumed his station at the computer with a depleted sigh, atypical of him. Rare indeed was the time that the turtle sat before a computer with anything but alert attention and anticipation, or at the very least determination. But tonight, he was mostly just frustrated. Having the object of his frustration along for the ride, and the direct cause of the thwarting of his plan to boot was doing little to improve his temprament. "I suppose we'll have to plan something else now." he said in Sly's general direction. Sly managed a smile.

"I know you'll think of something. You're good at that." The ringtail spoke, trying to inspire a spark of enthusiasm back into his friend. Bentley, encouraged a bit, smiled back.

"I always do."

"For my own sanity, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." Carmelita remarked, following the pair into what passed for the living room. As he had in the van, Sly once again noted with no small amount of concern the worry and the confusion that plauged her demeanor. It was so out-of-character for her, to be conflicted. Carmelita was nothing if not directed. Indeed, her focus was so complete, so perfect, that it routinely blinded her to other matters. _Like a magnifying glass..._ Sly thought, realizing how easily it could destroy that which it examined. And yet, here she was, indecision plauging her steps, making her draw closer into herself and... vulnerable. For once, the seething grey that always lurked at the border of black and white had reared into a monstrosity that was beyond the reach of the law, and now it threatened to subsume her, driving her to the only point of safety.

The ever-so-grey arms that now crossed in anxiety as their owner's grey face studied her worriedly.

"You do that." Bentley quickly replied, irritation showing.

Carmelita spun, reaching for her shock pistol. Her face sparked in anger, and it was clear she had no tolerance left for the night, whatsoever.

_Magnifying glass... remove the light..._

Her fingers, however, closed on air. She heard a clanking sound of metal hanging on metal, and knew what she'd see even before she turned around, which made it all the more irksome to turn and find Sly's cane dangling her pistol like a pinata.

"What were we talking about trust, Sly?" She said, fuming.

"Trust and threats are not the same thing, Carmelita." Sly replied, growing angry himself. "If I can't trust you not to go waving this thing around at us while we're risking _our_ necks to keep you out of whatever trouble you've cooked up this time, then you can take your shock pistol, badge, and little fire-engine red butt right out the door. You got it?" Much as he wanted to trust her outright, this issue had to be worked out right away if there was to be any hope of getting anywhere with her. While somewhere deep inside he was hoping that perhaps this little taste of conflict might for once push her toward an understanding of the bigger picture, blur that razor-sharp focus just enough to allow her to truly _see_, he also knew that the very same conflict might just as easly go the other way, strengthening her resolve. Carmelita's first instinct was to draw her gun whenever anyone didn't listen: not very conducive to teamwork.

Visions of the headlights flashing into her vision unbidden, Carmelita backed down and slumped her shoulders, though she still looked quite angry. "Alright, we'll play it your way, Cooper. Keep the pistol for now." _And yet, the fire-glass can also be among the more useful survival tools a person could want..._ Sly waved his cane about, slinging the pistol back at her. She deftly caught it, considering it a moment in her hands before re-holstering it.

"I'm not interested in keeping it, Carm." She appeared to bristle at the new familiar. "I just want you to curtail that little habit of trying to force everything at gunpoint. Besides, you may need that next time."

Carmelita shuddered, her anger suddenly interrupted by a cold shiver.

"There won't be a next time." she said succinctly, and with a finality she did not completely believe. None of them did.

"Much as I'd like to hope so, I'd highly doubt we've seen the last of them." Bentley chimed in. The reflections of the glowing screen in his glasses made the scene seem somwhat surreal, and the ghostly light trickled and mingled among the pale blue moonlight, illuminating it in an almost disturbing way. "I'll need to speak to you at length about this tomorrow, but I have my suspicions about the identity of your attackers, and I fear they are quite the persistant type."

"Then let us hope that the Cooper Gang can give them the slip as easily as they have me." she replied, the bitterness she tried to place into it sounding forced and hollow with fear.

"I think it's time we all went to bed, Carmelita." Sly suggested, sensing the fear and exhaustion that lingered in the air, tainted the conversation and taxed the mind. "We're all a bit testy right now, and I think a good night's sleep will improve our tempraments."

Right on cue, Murray's voice bellowed from the kitchen: "WHO ATE THE LAST OF MY MILKBALLS?"

Sly sighed and almost chuckled. It was apparent this was not the first time such had happened. "_You_ did, Murray." he said as the hippo waddled angrily into the living room. Murray slowed for a moment, and then it seemed to register on his face.

"Oh." he said simply.

"Not to be a raincloud, but where do I sleep?" Carmelita interjected. Sly stopped for a moment, caught unprepared. Caught deep in his own musings the entire evening, he hadn't thought it out that far in advance.

"I suppose you could sleep in my bed." He popped out without really thinking. Carmelita recoiled as if physically struck, blushing furiously.

"I mean you can _have_ mine!" he ammended quickly. "I'll sleep on the couch." The vixen still looked at him as if he'd just suggested she streak under the Eiffel tower.

"No Cooper," she said in her clipped Spanish accent "I'll take the couch." She eyed the threadbare patched cushions behind Sly for the first time, despite having already been in the room several minutes, and almost took it back. But she quickly resolved herself. _Besides, the bed probably wouldn't be any better anyway._ she thought, noting the condition of the rest of the house.

"Suit yourself." Sly said, shrugging as he moved toward the stairwell.

Carmelita looked around. The only television sat on an old metal tray, and the plaster walls were cracked. In places, it appeared they might once have had lilac wallpaper, but it was faded and mostly gone. The window was a bit grimy, as if it hadn't been washed in ages. A picture of an older raccoon, presumably one of Sly's relatives, adorned one of the walls, along with a picture of the three friends together as younger children. The frames were worn and scratched, with signs of having been moved rapidly more than once. _Somehow I expected more from someone who takes as much money as Sly does._ she thought, wondering where on Earth his money _did_ go. It certainly wasn't buying him furnishings and accomodations. _I'm not quite ready to buy that you're storing your treasures in heaven, thief..._

Footsteps on the stairs alerted her to Sly's return, and she turned in time to see him standing in the doorway with a blanket and pillow tucked under his arm.

"I thought you might want something besides just a bare couch." he said, handing the bedding to her.

She looked at him suspiciously for a moment. "Thank you." She said quietly, taking the blankets and tossing the pillow onto one end of the couch.

"I'm afraid I don't have anything that would work for you as a nightshirt, so I guess you'll just have to sleep in your day clothes tonight." She nodded quickly, having expected as much. "Bathroom is down the hall, last door on the right." He pointed to a dimly-lit hallway connecting to the living room.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her.

"How did _you_ know I sleep in a nightshirt?" she asked pointedly. Sly winced and looked at her sheepishly.

"No, on second thought, I don't want to know." She dismissed him with a waving gesture, and he made for the stairs, grateful to have been spared a stern tounge-lashing. She flopped onto the couch, closing her eyes and massaging her temples. She didn't know whether to be angry at him or flattered. Or both. Bentley had already left for bed, the computer now unattended. Murray was nowhere to be seen. Quiet descended, and sleep claimed the exhausted vixen.

* * *

Rose-tinted square beams of fading sunlight creeped across the wall before finally landing on the television screen, glinting back into Carmelita's face. She scrunched her face a few times before awakening slightly and putting up a hand to block the light. She blinked a few times and squinted, getting her bearings. It took her a moment to remember exactly where she was, but she wasn't suddenly shocked to discover herself on Sly's couch. At least, not any more than she was generally shocked about the entire experience overall, but as the fog of waking up rolled out, burned away by the last vestigal rays of Sol, she found herself not quite so... unnerved by it as she had been last night. Much as she hated to admit it, they had developed a grudging mutual admiration (though 'friendship' might be too strong a word for it). 

No sooner had _that_ thought completed than her words the night before came back. _Oh, that's low._ She mentally upbraided herself. _Find a guy who's sweet on you and play to him to get what you want. Is that how low you've stooped, or am I misreading it?_ Try as she might, she couldn't quite come up with a direct answer for that, and it left a sinking feeling in her gut. He had done it to her sometimes, it was true, but she'd always felt it... beneath her.

Shuffling footsteps caused her to turn her head, and she saw Sly sleepily dismount the stairs. Taking a deep breath that was not quite a yawn, she turned and lay on her back for a moment, trying to get fully awake. She tossed back the blankets and now a full yawn took over, causing her to stretch out until her feet were over one end of the couch and her arms above her head reached over the other end. Sly, still in a nightshirt, staggered back into the living room, looking patently exhausted, except that now he held a steaming mug of what had to be coffee. Shifting to a sitting position, Carmelita wordlessly moved to let him sit down. He nodded in thanks and took the opposite end, sinking into the cushions. It was a tradition of his, every time there had been a heist or a huge job or any kind of noteworthy appearance that involved him or his friends. He would watch the evening news the next night to see the story. He never seemed to tire of it, though Bentley couldn't really understand the fascination and Murray never really registered it at all.

Carmelita started. What she had thought was his mask... was just that, his mask. Except that this one was the natural one, a darker grey fur band around his eyes that tapered off to points on the sides of his head under his ears, not a piece of soft cloth. In years of chasing him, despite all of the time they'd seen one another, she had never seen him without his mask on. It didn't change his appearance all that much, and she presumed (correctly) that it was more for show than for any real concealment. He wasn't exactly protecting his identity, after all, only his location. His fur was a bit disheveled as one might expect if one sleeps on it the wrong way. His eyes were half-lidded as he picked up the remote and flipped on the TV, mindlessly channel-surfing. It was the most candid moment she'd ever seen of him, and in that moment he somehow became more real. His manner, his appearance... he suddenly looked normal, like any other joe on the street. She turned her attention to the TV superficially, but kept sneaking sidelong glances at him. It was such a simple transformation that it was spellbinding. It seemed to awe her that she had somehow never seen him... as a person. Not just an object (and an annoyingly handsome and flirtatious one at that), but a real living, breathing person, with thoughts, hopes, ambitions, and dreams. The silence was at the same time awkward, but also comfortable in a way.

_He's a living, breathing paradox._ she mused. _A walking contradiction, a living grey area, literally._ He frowned for a moment, suddenly becoming aware of someone watching him, and turned to look at her. Only then did she realize that her 'sidelong glances' had turned into a continuous stare. He chuckled.

"What's the matter? Never seen a guy with a cup of coffee before?" he asked casually.

"Just not used to being here." she said. Sly shrugged and went back to watching television.

"Yes, well, not to be rude, but don't get used to it." Bentley said from behind them.

"Now Bentley, is that any way to treat a guest?" Sly mocked. Bentley frowned.

"You'd do well to use a little more caution, Sly. You're just lucky that we've got a plan worked out on this one already."

Carmelita raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. "However, right now, I need to borrow the good Inspector for a while." he continued, looking at Carmelita for any indication of her reaction.

"And what do you need me for, shellback?" She said, immediately on the alert. Sly lightly smacked her wrist.

"Knock it off. You're in trouble, and since you can't call up Interpol to help you out, you're gonna have to cooperate with us if we're going to figure out how to get you out of it." Sly said, becoming slightly annoyed. Carmelita glared at him, but he went back to sipping from his steaming mug and staring sleepily at the television. On the local news, there was a story about the 'big chase' of the previous night.

"Okay, okay. What do you want to know?" She relented.

"Well, most importantly I need to know some background on these" he held up the battered manilla folder the Chief had handed her before sending her out "because they are the apparent target of the attacks."

"_I_ was the target, if you'll recall." she replied, narrowing her eyes.

"They attacked you, yes. But other than your posessions, what possible motive could they have for attacking you?"

Carmelita stopped for a second and thought.

"Y'know something, you might have a point there. When they came for me in my house, the one who slapped me wanted to know where I had the files at..." The vixen pulled a hard-backed chair up and sat down across the desk from Bentley, who was still partially hidden behind his computer.

Bentley nodded sagely. "And they searched your car for it when you were abducted the second time, even at the cost of precious getaway time."

"So... you think this is what it's all about? Why take me, the second time, then? Why not just grab the files and run?"

"Well, aside from the obvious motive of leaving fewer traces, you may have learned something, or they may have _thought_ you learned something in the meantime that they couldn't afford to allow loose. Did any of the men who attacked you reveal anything useful in the interrogations?"

"No, I didn't have time to see that..." She trailed off, realizing where this was going. Help or no help, she wasn't quite ready to reveal that there was a leak at Interpol. Just because they were nice did not change the fact that they were still criminals, and might not hesitate to exploit the weakness.

"Which brings me to another question: why didn't you go back to Interpol instead of coming with us?"

"They thought someone might have found out some personal information on me, and would use it to track me down." Not a lie, but an omission. It was true enough, as far as it went.

"I see. Well, what exactly are the files, Inspector? That might give us some clue as to what on Earth they're after."

"I really haven't the foggiest. It's just a bunch of weird letters and number on the page, y'know?"

"Cryllic." Bentley tossed out.

"Whatever. I don't have a clue what they are."

Bentley turned the folder over in his hand and opened it, leafing through the printout pages again. The yellowed sheets of printout told him nothing more on the twentieth time he flipped through them than the first, except that something was wrong. _Very_ wrong.

"I've been analyzing this page you dropped" he held up one sheet in particular "for a few days now, but I can't find anything about it either. Perhaps if you could enlighten me as to the context of its discovery, I could deduce something more meaningful."

Carmelita frowned for a second. "How did you...?" she began. Bentley just gave a meaningful nod toward the raccoon on the couch without even looking up.

Enraged, she stood up explosively, knocking the chair over. Sly paused in mid-sip and looked at her questioningly.

"You were following me!" she yelled, pointing an accusational finger.

Sly shrugged. "You were so intent on him that you ran right past me. Naturally, I was curious. Either you dropped a sheet or he did, but it looked important so I picked it up after you left. I actually thought you might want or need it back later."

Carmelita fumed, but said nothing. It wasn't wrong, per se, but it still irritated her.

"No one appreciates a good samaritan these days..." Sly grumbled as he returned to the news.

"Getting back to the subject, Ms. Fox?" Bentley prompted, trying to calm her. Carmelita sat back down and faced him again. "Well, these files were in Interpol. I know, I know, we should know what they were." she responded at his questioning look. "But they were in some sort of hidden room."

"A hidden room?" the turtle echoed.

"Yeah. Right under the archives. Same floor I used to work on waaay back, but there's no door to it. I've been all over that level and that room wasn't anywhere in it. At least, not so you could get to it normally."

Bentley leaned a little closer, intrigued. "That sounds important. How did you find it, let alone get inside?"

"This new guy comes up to my office with some paperwork, and I need to go get some files. So he asks me if I'd like to go with him, and I'm thinking he's not all that bad, so I go with him. We get into the records room, and we're lookin' around, when I thought I heard something. Its a few racks over, in the creepy area, and I see this door open on the floor. A trapdoor, under the carpet. I see a flashlight down inside, so I call the new guy over for backup and go in. There was a guy all dressed up in camo inside and he tried to get the jump on me, but he ran when I nearly fried him. I chased him down and found him carrying those." She motioned to the files.

"Interpol suspects them to be terrorists, then." It was more a statement than a question. "Well, this is a fairly odd place for hidden files to be stored. Did you find any other files in the room?"

"I hadn't had time to go look. I went home and got attacked, and that's how this whole nightmare started."

"I see. One last question. When you said the 'creepy' area, what did you mean?"

"Oh yeah. I hate that place. There's records there back from the Cold War. Lotsa good people got taken down in those days. I read a few of the case files once. You don't wanna know some of the things that happened back then, and we're the _good_ guys. I'd hate to think what happened on the other side of the Iron Curtain. It just always gives me the creeps."

"It's rarely so simple as 'good guys' and 'bad guys', Ms. Fox, but your point is well taken. However, given that the files are in Cryllic, and given their hidden nature, I suspect a strong connection between the room's placement and the content of the files. These could very well be the spoils of a covert operation from the Cold War."

"Maybe so, but why bother? It's all over now, and surely they wouldn't still have the same secrets now?"

"For most things, you're right, Inspector, especially given the paranoia of the Soviet Union. This suggests, when taken with the apparent age of the documents, that whatever uses them must be something that would be relatively hard to change a code on. Something that would endure, and have use to a terrorist organization today."

Carmelita started to get an inkling of where he was going. "So, you're saying that these are some sort of... I dunno, security codes?"

Bentley shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid it's worse than that, Ms. Fox. Given the timing of the recent Cheyrnobl incident, I would have to conclude that these are arming codes for Soviet nuclear warheads."

Sly spewed coffee out onto the TV, eyes going wide as dinner plates.

"**_WHAT?_**" he demanded, leaping up from his seat.

"It certainly looks that way. Which also explains a great deal about why our black-clad friends are after it." the turtle replied.

"You're in league with those creeps?" Carmelita started, reaching for her shock pistol.

"Figure of speech, Ms. Fox." Bentley explained.

"But... why would they do that to Cherynobl, if they already had a nuke? Why draw so much attention to themselves?" Sly wondered, still very shocked. _Carm, honey, I knew you had to be in trouble... but this is deeper than I'd ever imagined..._

"Honestly, I don't know. They may have needed some component, as any device purchased from Russia would be showing its age by now. Or, God forbid, it may have been a test-detonation. That's really beside the point. What is important now is that we get and keep both these files and Carmelita out of their reach."

Carmelita butted in. "But if that's the case, then we have to let Interpol know at once!"

Bentley sighed. "Much as I'd like to avoid any involvement with Interpol, I'd have to agree. This is so far outside our league it's not funny. We need to return these documents to Interpol."

"No!" She blurted out. "I mean... they might not be..." The vixen blushed, realizing she'd just given away her secret.

"Might not be what?" asked Sly.

"Safe." She sighed, sagging her shoulders. "There's a leak at Interpol, and until its plugged, I can't go back safely, nor can I keep the documents there. Frankly, I can't even talk to anyone there aside from the Chief himself: everyone else is suspect. He's the one who sent me away with the documents, so I can keep them from being stolen."

Sly gave her a reassuring smile. "Well, don't worry. We'll make sure that you stay safely put, and we'll find a way to let your chief know what's going on."

"And just how do you plan to do that?" she shot back, incredulous.

"Er... Umm... " Sly switched feet uncomfortably "...Bentley will think of something."

Bentley shot Sly a look that could have vaporized steel.

* * *

Yup. This just got a whole lot more dangerous. Stay tuned! 

Note: The other day, I realized that I completely botched the timeline for this. It's both before _and_ after Sly 2, making some references to the game yet clearly featuring Murray and Bentley as they were before. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do about that. Any suggestions would be welcome. (I'd prefer not sticking 'AU' on the summary. That always seemed to me like a lazy way out unless you meant it that way from the start.)

And, as always, please R&R or C&C or whatever letters you want to substitute for feedback!


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Notes, Chapter 8:

First off, I'd like to apologize for this having taken so long following the other chapters. Sadly, my senior year and my subsequent search for a job has left me with little time for this kind of thing. But I don't intend to abandon this.

Dark Jackal: Thank you, thank you, and again thank you. I greatly appreciate it to see people review and enjoy the story so much. Little else could motivate me in quite the same way, and I shall do my best to see that what has started will continue to live up to the opening.

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for reading and reviewing.

Note: while Jay Leno is a comedian, I'm not. So please forgive me if the scene with him isn't all that funny. I was trying my best to emulate that style he uses in humor, including a few jokes that might be offensive to some people.

* * *

_Chapter 8_

_

* * *

_

From: Bentley Turtle  
To: Robert Grey (rgreyfrinterpol.int)  
Subject: -none-  
Attach: BTErase.exe (721b)

I presume you know who this is. Carmelita is currently in our protection. The files are safe, and we can make arrangements to have them sent wherever you need them. Don't reply to this address in case someone is watching your outbound traffic. Activate attached program to erase this message permanently. We have uncovered the meaning of files, and they are inestimably dangerous. Contact us after hours tonight at (37) 3 52 44 XX XX. We will be waiting for call, do not attempt to trace and do not call from somewhere you may be overheard.

* * *

"Yeah, I think that ought to do it." Carmelita said, nodding in approval after reading over the message for the third time. "Are you sure you can get that to him without it being seen? I mean, what if the guy watching is in the computer room?" 

"Let me handle the email security." Bentley replied confidently, queuing the message to be sent in the morning. He didn't want to send the message tonight, because the longer it sat in the chief's inbox, the greater the chances of someone finding it. The chief wouldn't see it until the following morning anyway.

"Great job, Bentz. I knew you'd think of something." Sly said, grinning broadly.

"Yes, well that's just the start." replied the turtle. "Once we actually hear from him, we need to actually arrange these documents being sent off. And unless the chief can find somewhere else for you to be, Inspector, then I think you had best remain here with us for a while."

Carmelita closed her eyes and massaged her temple, trying to stave off the building headache. "But if I don't have the files anymore, then I'm not the target." She interjected.

"Yes, but if this plan goes off well, then they specifically will _not_ know that you _don't_ have the files. As far as they're concerned you'll still be target numero uno. Even if they somehow did find out, you're still at risk as they might, correctly, deduce that you know too much. Either way, until this is over, you need to lay low."

"I can't believe I'm hiding from a bunch of thugs in cammo..." she groaned.

"Well-organized, resourceful, well-connected, armed thugs in cammo." Sly added.

"But still thugs!" Carmelita said, exasperated. Sly had no real response for that.

Murray walked over and sat down on the couch, reaching for the remote. Night-time television was in full swing, and he flipped through his favorite channels. There were still many news specials about the continuing Chernobyl disaster, and the wide nets being cast for terrorist activities, but he finally settled on a comedy show. Canned laughter mixed with the real audience and rang hollowly from the speaker into the room as the host tossed out a one-liner, mirrored by the laughs in the hippo's booming voice.

"Yeah, did you hear about the Russians today? I'm sure most of you saw this in the papers..." On the screen, Jay Leno strutted around in that way only wolves can muster. "It seems they lost a submarine the other day. It's rather something of an embarrassment." He paced back and forth, speaking rather quietly, building up to the punchline. "But then, after they tore down the wall, how can you expect them to keep up with their own navels?"

It was not one of his wittier jokes, and the crowd offered only token applause. Murray only chuckled lightly. Leno raised a paw and waved the audience's less-than-enthusiastic applause off. "I know, I know. I shouldn't make fun of that. I just thought that by now they'd have figured out where Sean Connery was going, y'know?" The cymbal crashed, and this time more laughter erupted from the audience. But then, it always did for him, even with a mediocre joke.

"Well, it's not like Bush could find it any better. According to the USA Today polls, 68 of Americans don't think he's doing his job." He let that sink in a moment. "Sixty-eight percent. Of course, sixty-seven percent of those polled are ex-KGB, so..." Cymbal crash. Laughter.

Sly plopped down next to Murray, unintimidated by his bulk. They often watched a late-night show of some kind together before starting a job. Bentley rarely joined in, but Carmelita followed suit, unsure of finding anything else better.

"Y'know, I don't think the Russians ever really forgave America for that?" Leno plowed on with that mock-serious air, as if he had some confidential musings to share in private with the audience of millions, "I mean, how often do you see the Russian president making a visit to America? But then, maybe it's just to avoid presidential hugs..." A picture flashed on the screen of President Clinton hugging an official and laughter roared through the crowds. "Maybe we should tell 'em Bush doesn't do that, huh?" he flung out as an afterthought as the picture faded back to the camera.

Carmelita snickered. It was hard not to, even though it was so irreverent and typically arrogant. It was still just funny in that way that only gifted comedians can make things seem.

"I still don't see what you like so much about these shows, Murray." Sly chimed in. "I like a good comedy as much as the next guy, but this is all politics. Leaves me a bit... like a bad aftertaste in my mouth, I guess."

"It's the truth in them that makes it funny, though." Carmelita added quietly. Sly suddenly looked at her, noticing her presence for the first time since she had sat down. "Yeah!" Murray chimed in, "It's funny 'cuz it's real! I mean, who'd think that was funny if it didn't happen?" Outnumbered, Sly held up his hands in a gesture of defeat, but with a smirk. Who could argue with logic like that? "Alright, alright. I give." he said, his eyes not quite returning to the television screen from Carmelita's face.

"I give the Russians too hard a time, I know." Leno continued, "But there was some good news today, too. A plant up near Moscow just rolled out their first Model-T." Before the laughs could die down, he kept the ball rolling expertly. "Maybe in a decade they'll be ready for rock 'n roll? I can see it now, Leninstock!"

Carmelita put a paw over her muzzle, trying to suppress giggles. It wasn't funny... it _shouldn't_ have been funny... but it was! Sly's smile grew a bit warmer as he watched her. _Now why couldn't I see _this _every once in a while?_ he thought. She turned and looked at him, and he forced himself to look at his watch rather than let her catch him staring.

"Well, It's eleven-thirty. I think we'd better cut that off and get moving." Murray groaned loudly in protest.

"Why don't I ever get to finish the show?"

"You do, most of the time." Sly countered. "Just not tonight. We need to get go-"

Overhead, a very faint sound of breaking glass reached the master thief's ears. He stiffened, tensing all up and down. Another round of laughter erupted from the tinny speaker, and Murray was glued to the set. Glancing over, neither the Interpol inspector nor the computer genius seemed to have heard it either. "-ing." he finished softly. Slowly, he stood up.

"I've gotta go get something from my room." He said, trying to remain casual. Perhaps it was nothing, after all, and there was no need to alarm everyone for nothing. "When I get back, we need to head out, so finish up there Murray." The hippo nodded dumbly, not really paying attention. Carmelita gave him a questioning look, having noticed his mid-sentence change of demeanor, quickly concealed. His eyes met hers, then flicked upward to indicate the second floor. Slowly, the vixen nodded, taking the meaning. She, too, tensed, and quietly rested her hand on the shock pistol at her side. Rising slowly, she adopted a relaxed air and slowly meandered over toward Bentley.

Bentley was looking over news feeds, trying to connect the pieces of the very strange, very frightening puzzle that was slowly falling into place. He typed up a few more notes to himself and hit save on the text file, as was his habit. It served him in good stead as Carmelita quietly reached down and pressed 'esc', closing all of his open documents. The turtle's face took on a look of shock, followed instantly by rage. _How dare she?_ He opened his mouth to yell at her, but she was too quick, smacking a hand over it to muffle him. Carmelita bent down and whispered into his ear:

"Get anything you can't leave behind into the van. I've got a really bad feeling about this."

_I've got a really bad feeling about this..._ Sly thought as he crept down the upper floor's hall. It was maddening, even to a thief, to have to be totally silent in one's own home. Worse, his keen, finely honed senses detected nothing, making him feel ever the greater fool. But something on the edge of his consciousness told him that something was amiss, like a sixth sense. He paused, pressed against the wall, and strained for several heartbeats, listening for anything. _Nothing. Nothing at all. So why does that feel so wrong?_ A few more painfully slow steps down the corridor, and again he listened. An insect crawled out from under a floorboard halfway down the hall. The beetle's black shell glistened in a beam of moonlight cast from the hallway window. It paused in the middle of the floor, perched on an oaken board, watching him.

Suddenly, the realization hit him. _No crickets._ He looked up from the floor just in time to see a black shadow slip out the end door and step into the hall. In it's arm was an upraised black metal object...

"RUN!" Sly yelled, hitting the floor and rolling away from them just as the first shots tore out the sheetrock at his end of the hall. From two more rooms, identically black-clad figures pounded into the hallway, all armed. Sly dove for top of the stairs to dodge the obvious following fullisade, only narrowly escaping at the price of a painful staircase dismount.

Murray grabbed him and tossed him toward the sofa, barreling up the staircase with a roar. Whatever the first one thundering down the stairs had been expecting, Murray clearly wasn't it. He brought up his Uzi to fire, but the hippo slammed into the stairwell wall, knocking it out of his grip as it squeezed off a few rounds. Bentley's computer screens shattered, the plasma LCD monitors never having been designed to stop bullets. Bentley swore under his breath and yanked one of the towers free of it's cables, running with it toward the garage. Carmelita, hearing the shots, came racing in, pistol leveled, but Murray was now wedged in front of the assailants, holding back the tide. He slammed his fists mercilessly into the fore-most one, causing sounds that couldn't be mistaken as anything but bone shattering. The black-clad man, a leopard, made a noise like a deflating tire and crumpled to the side, rolling past Murray with widened eyes and clutching his stomach. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth.

It wasn't much of a spatial reprieve, but the next man made do. Shoving back against the ones pushing him further forward, he leveled his weapon at Murray. Murray jumped backward landing on his posterior as the man fired at what would have been waist-high. But rather than simply fall and land, Murray kept going. The floorboards, already pressed to the limit with so much weight on them, failed under the sudden impact. The floor collapsed next to him, along with part of the wall, and he fell into the basement. Carmelita, crouching behind the couch, raised up and fired off three shots, trying to drive them back. The entire stairwell had been exposed when the section of wall fell, revealing four additional attackers perched and scrambling for their weapons. They must have succeeded, because several rounds now peppered the opposite end of the couch, the floorboards around her, and the ceiling. Leno was in the middle of some French joke when the TV spat fire and died, the cathode ray tube exploding in a shower of glass as gunfire ripped the set to pieces.

Carmelita rolled to the side, exposing just enough of herself to line up two more shots at the staircase. The first one was a dead-on hit, nailing the man at the top of the steps. The second went wide, splintering the central support post around which the staircase was built. The entire building groaned and the whole staircase plunged into the basement. Carmelita blinked in surprise, but quickly rolled back into cover as another black-clad figure leaned upside down from the second floor and opened fire. The window that faced the street shattered as another man leapt in and crouched, trying to get his bearings. That hesitation was all the Inspector needed to draw a crosshair on his forehead and fire. He fell backwards into spastic convulsions, rivulets of electrical energy making his body writhe on the broken glass, adding numerous cuts. A second man leapt into the breech and opened fire, determined not to repeat his predecessor's mistake by bothering to look for a target first. Seizing the opportunity before he realized what exactly he was looking at, the vixen dove for the door connecting to the garage.

She needn't have bothered. A spray of bullets tore open the wall dividing the kitchen and the living room, coming straight from the garage. Carmelita looked up and saw Sly hammering the garage wall with the van's chaingun. The man who had just jumped in never knew what hit him. The stream of bullets angled up, bisecting the floor above. The man at the top of the stairs had a fairly good idea of what hit _him_, not that it made a difference as the light left his eyes. In the hallway on the second floor, the flooring exploded with a line of bullets that seemed to chase the fleeing attackers down the hall. They dove for rooms left and right and the stream passed by. Sly moved the chaingun in one full arc until it was pointing straight up.

"Well, I suppose that does it for this safehouse." he said dryly, his voice barely above a whisper.

"STOP THERE!" said a voice in a thick middle-eastern accent. Looking forward, Sly, Bentley, and Carmelita saw Murray standing in the door that lead to the basement, fear etched on his face. A cold black silencer was pressed next to his head, and an arm was around his neck. A man was behind him, with cold fury in his eyes, holding him hostage. Murray was visibly shaking, mouthing "...sorry..." over and over again. He had at least two gunshot wounds in his arm, bleeding unattended. Sly raised his hands where he stood, letting go of the chaingun grips. Bentley and Carmelita followed suit.

"Get out door!" the pistol-wielder yelled, gesturing vehemently toward the garage door. Bentley very slowly and cautiously reached out and touched the door control, causing it to reel upward. Like a curtain lifting to reveal the actors, the door slowly disclosed two black vans and four armed men, weapons leveled. The vans were both parked outside the fence, engines still running. Two of the men rushed in and grabbed Carmelita, relieving her of her weapon and leading her to one of the vans, while the other two took up positions at either side of the garage door opening and guarded all movements. The hostage-taker maneuvered Murray out beside the Cooper van, and under the door, toward the same van that now held Carmelita. They pushed him in and shut the rear doors, then came back for Sly and Bentley.

Bentley suddenly smacked the garage door opener again, and the door began descending. In Europe, as in America, safeguards are required so that if the door shuts on a person, it will immediately stop and reopen before the person can be injured. Neither of the men standing in it's way knew this, however, and both dove out of the way: one in, one out. There was shouting outside and more bullet-holes appeared in the metal door, but the raccoon and turtle had already taken cover. Sly jumped on top of the van and then landed on the one who had fallen to the inside. He screamed as Sly wrenched his neck pitilessly. There was an audible snap, and the thief hopped on top again, this time wiggling into the gunner's nest and swinging the gun to point toward the door.

"Floor it!" he yelled to Bentley, who was already shifting into reverse. The van's engine roared to life like an angry, wounded beast and the van tore through the garage door. Sly's finger hit the trigger and once more the chaingun spat death into the night. Two of the men were felled instantly, and Sly swept the gun over the second van. It didn't explode like some corny movie, but the sounds it made sent a clear message that it would never again move without the assistance of a tow-truck. Sly swung around to deal with the last two men, but they were already leveling to fire at the now-retreating van. Sly ducked, but not in time. He felt a sharp pain in his side as a metal slug buried itself in a rib. But rather than keep backing up, Bentley threw the van into forward, the glass fragments from the windshield bouncing harmlessly off his shell. He smashed the pedal to the floor and the van surged forward with a righteous fury, crushing the one who had grabbed Murray and knocking the other aside. Sly swung the chaingun around and finished off the other before he could reach for his gun again, then sank painfully against the small chair.

The rear doors on the first van exploded outward, unable to hold the brute strength of Murray. Carmelita grabbed her pistol from the front seat and surveyed the scene. It was like a war zone in miniature. There were dead and dying bodies clad in the color of mourning lying all over the place. In the distance, Interpol sirens could be heard. She knew it would not take them long to reach this place.

"C'mon, let's go." She said in her clipped spanish accent, gently steering Murray toward the Cooper van. He nodded and took over for Bentley, who was sweeping glass out of the front seat. The chaingun had already retracted, and Sly was huddled against the wall on the inside, clutching his side. A dark crimson stain was slowly spreading through his shirt, and he gritted his teeth even as he started to shiver. Bentley somberly pulled a remote control out of his pocket and pressed the only button. The old building suddenly burst into flames that raced all through it. Carmelita shook her head and shut the doors. Murray choked back a sob as he watched the flames lick the rooftop and pressed the pedal. The Cooper van trundled into the night, looking for refuge so Cooper and company could lick their wounds.


End file.
